The Resident Electoral Commissioner in the FCT, Prof. Jacob Jatau, has declared that with what he has observed so far, there may not be issue of inconclusiveness in the ongoing Area councils election in the seat of power.
Prof. Jatau told newsmen in an interview when the the FCT Commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) Patrick E. Ukpan, visited the FCT INEC while monitoring of the polls.
The FCT REC said that if there are violence during the election that lead to conciliation of some polling units, it may result in re-run.
“I don’t think we are the one to avoid re-run. We want to urge every voter to be peaceful and I believe that is what actually lead to re-run, when there are violence and you have to council some polling units, then there is possibility of re-run but if everybody is peaceful and we work together properly I believe there won’t be any re-run or inconclusiveness. But I want to warn people who want to forment trouble that if you do you will cause us to have re-run. Ideally, INEC itself doesn’t want a re-run issue.”
On the reports of low turn-out of voters across the area councils, Prof. Jatau said: “The low turn-out will always be there especially when it is Local government election like this, however, we feel that people may turn en-mass. We don’t expect that it may be as heated as National Assembly or Presidential elections that we had last year.”
He also confirmed that with the reports he was getting from all the identified flash-points “everything is peaceful.”
He said: “It is not new, we have already used it in the re-run we have had, and we believe we will have a very good turn-out with that because when you come and you are accredited and vote, we will feel that people will nit think we are wasting their time.
“The elections are going on and we are able to open polling units and so far we are going on with the elections. The few challenges we ‘ve had with Card readers we have been able to correct it.”
Also responding, NSCDC FCT Commandant, Patrict Ukpan, vowed to deal with anybody trying to disrupt the election process, adding that the identified flash-points were adequately secured to avoid crisis of any nature.
