FCT council poll: CESDA wants adherence to rules

Ahead of the February FCT Council elections the Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Development Awareness (CESDA) has called for adequate preparation and adherence to the rule of law and other dictates to ensure the success of the election.

Executive Director of the centre, Mr. Olusola Babalola, made the call on Wednesday in Abuja.

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He said that the organisation will be observing the election slated for 12th February 2022 across the six area councils.

“As part of our efforts to promote the credibility of elections and citizen’s participation in the electoral process, the CESDA under the project titled; promoting the political rights of the Original Inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) through the support from MacArthur Foundation and Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) will be observing the forthcoming elections.

“CESDA’s observation efforts will involve deploying a total of 100 trained and accredited non-partisan observers for the election fixed for February 12th, 2022,” he said.

Babalola said the observers will be deployed across the 62 wards in the six councils of the FCT and supported by observer supervisors to observe and report on the opening of polling units (PUs), voter accreditation, voting, sorting, counting, and the announcement of results amongst other aspects of the Election Day procedures as laid down by the INEC.

He said, “In advance of the elections, CESDA is undertaking voter education activities to mobilize and encourage residents of the FCT to participate in the electoral process leading to the election day.

“The forthcoming election will be the first to be conducted in the FCT by INEC since the expansion of PUs from 871 to 2,822 intended to provide access to more voters and expectedly improve voter turnout in the elections.

“CESDA expects that the commission has sufficiently reallocated these polling units to the teaming voting population and will provide information to the prospective voters about the locations of the polling units to avoid a repeat of the Anambra election where more than 86 PUs had zero voters.

“While we commend the commission (INEC) on its efforts to improve electoral integrity through the adoption of more technologies, such as the introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) as recently deployed in the Anambra elections.

“It is our opinion that ahead of the FCT elections, the commission should consider reviewing some of the operational and technical lapses observed in the usage of the technology and ensure they are adequately resolved ahead of the elections in order not to disenfranchise voters on technical grounds this time around,” he said.