All is set for a historic election into the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council scheduled to hold this Saturday 12th February,with the Independent National Electoral Commission promising stakeholders a free and fair process as the umpire.

INEC has been holding series of meetings with different groups including security agencies on the need to deliver a hitch-free election on Saturday. Today’s meeting with the stakeholders is the climax of such consultations. The meeting is an avenue for INEC to lay out its plans for the election and for the stakeholders to ask questions that will clear all grey areas.

As part of his counsel to the political parties, INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu urged them to allow voters the freewill to choose their leaders by allowing the process to be fair and smooth. He urged them “to make the FCT election another shining example”

The INEC Chairman said the Commission had intensified its engagement with stakeholders, particularly party leaders and candidates, traditional and religious leaders, transport providers, civil society organisations and the media to ensure that the forthcoming election is peaceful and our processes credible. That is why this meeting is crucial.”

In all, 473 candidates from 14 political parties will be contesting in the polls; 363 of the contestants are vying for 62 councillorship positions in the six area councils.

INEC Chairman told stakeholders that 1,328 polling units in the territory have a maximum of 50 voters, while 546 others have more than 1,000 registered voters. But, there will be no voting in 593 polling units because there are no registered voters in those polling units recently created by the National Assembly.

Consequently, a total of 1322 ad-hoc staff have been trained in readiness for elections in the Kuje Council of the Federal Capital Territory; sensitive materials for the Area Council election would be delivered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to the commission’s FCT office in Garki on Thursday February 10, while the non-sensitive materials have already been delivered

The Commission has accredited 58 observer groups (53 domestic and 5 foreign) who will be deploying a total of 2,242 field observers.

Similarly, the commission said it has accredited 45 media organisations deploying 340 journalists to cover the election, adding that it would work with the security agencies to ensure that observers and the media are granted unimpeded access to voting and collation locations.

In a meeting with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) earlier Prof Yakubu listed all the arrangements that have been put in place for a successful election. The meeting was attended both the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr Yahaya Bello and the Commissioner of Police for the FCT, Mr Babaji Sunday who briefed participants on the security situation and the state of readiness for the election. Prof Yakubu noted that “securing the environment is the foundation for a peaceful, well-organised and credible election. This was clearly demonstrated in the peaceful conduct of the recent Anambra State Governorship election. Let us make the FCT Area Council election another shining example of a peaceful election.”

Prof. Yakubu further stated that the Commission had been evaluating the risk to the election, using the Election Violence Mitigation and Advocacy Tool (EMVAT). According to him, the aim is to identify early warning signals that could assist the security agencies and other stakeholders in devising and deploying appropriate mitigation strategies.

He stated that the Commission, among other areas of concern, focused on threats specific to geographical locations, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, the issue of hard drugs, the presence of insurgents and armed groups, intra and inter-party conflicts and incidents of hate speech.

The FCT election is a close watch for political pundits because of the recent outcome of the 2019 presidential election. The FCT results showed that the PDP had a lead despite its location as the seat of the federal government where President Buhari holds sway. But since all politics is local, it is difficult for analysts to predict the eventual winners of the election as voters will be motivated by other factors than factors in a general election.