Peaceful elections in FCT

What happened in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) during the recent presidential and parliamentary elections, where President Muhammadu Buhari emerged victorious, despite losing in the FCT to his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has clearly demonstrated that this government and indeed the FCT Administration are firm believers that the will of the people is sacrosanct and must never be subverted for any reason.

As it happened, the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar scored the most votes of 259,997 in the contest in the FCT, against the 152,224 votes that was scored by President Muhammadu Buhari. The senatorial candidate of the PDP, Phillip Aduda, also defeated Zaphaniah Jisalo of the APC with wide margin.

While several explanations have been made for this outcome, including the notion that the FCT is inhabited mainly by people from the geographical regions that have strong affiliations with the PDP, some pundits and political analysts have however gone to the extreme by blaming the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, for this outcome. Their claim is that the minister’s unwillingness to dip into the public coffers to make money available for politicking may have dampened the morale of voters in the FCT.

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But a clear look at this position, however, shows that those making these statements may still be clung to the dark ages of Nigeria’s electioneering history where elections are characterized mainly by financial inducements of voters, electoral umpires, among others. This is because anyone who keenly observed what happened during the recently concluded elections will see clearly that voters gave their support to whomsoever they chose irrespective of money factors.

In the North where Muhammadu Buhari is a phenomenon, the support for him was overwhelming. The PDP candidate Atiku also received much support from the South which has always been a PDP stronghold. So, to lay the blame for the pattern of voting in the FCT on the FCT minister is a tad misleading.

Clearly, what happened in the FCT is that the will of the majority prevailed in a peaceful atmosphere as the minister promised before the elections. Lastly, it is important for Nigerians to see the outcome of this election as the will of the people and not the handiwork of one strongman somewhere. Nigerians are politically enlightened and this much they have demonstrated during the recently concluded presidential and parliamentary elections. Anyone who still believes that money is the only deciding factor in elections in Nigeria, even after seeing what happened, is either playing the ostrich or has taken a trip out of reality land.

Danladi Akilu,

Abuja