The February 12 FCT council polls were a kind of disaster to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The party won three out of the six area councils. In the 2016 elections, the APC was in control of five area councils–AMAC, Abaji, Bwari, Kuje, and Kwali while the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was not in control of any of the six area councils, as APGA was controlling Gwagwalada. In the 2019 elections, the APC won the chairmanship seats in Abaji, Kwali, Gwagwalada, and AMAC while the PDP won in Kuje and Bwari. In 2022, the opposition PDP was able to dislodge the ruling APC, gaining control of Bwari, Kuje, and AMAC. The APC is left with Gwagwalada, Abaji and Kwali.
What went wrong? Is it the fault of the FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello? Is it that of the ruling APC at both the Abuja and national levels? Or the results are peoples’ way of showing their dissatisfactions with APC’s way of governance in Abuja and the country at large.
The Governor David Umahi led 131-member APC national campaign council for the Federal Capital Territory Area Council election was caught napping. The campaigns were poorly done, logistics and mobilisation of supporters were insufficient, thus widespread voter apathy impaired the elections; which resulted in many voters shunning the polls.
Some pundits are of the view that the APC Abuja chapter didn’t put its house in order and was not organised and ready for the polls- for example, the APC had two aspirants in AMAC until the Supreme Court’s verdict 48 hours to the elections. The APC despite winning the Abaji chairmanship position doesn’t know its candidate, – the duo of Abubakar Umar Abdullah and Alhaji Mohammed Angulu Loko are still in court battling for the party’s ticket.
The FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello, has found himself in a catch-22 situation. He appears apolitical in a politically-dense environment. Some people accused him of not fully participating in the politics of Abuja as previous FCT administrations had done. The minister was right and wrong at the same time. As the FCT Minister under the administration of the APC, he must ‘assert’ the powers and influence of his office to guide and renature the APC to win the February 12 area councils election. By not fully doing that, the minister was wrong. However, for allowing things to go unhindered, he was right. Some people are of the view that the FCT Minister’s simple approach has weakened the APC in Abuja. For example, take the issue of Abuja city waste management, which is now in the courts- AMAC vs the FCDA and the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP). When the ministers came on board, he beautifully reorganised and expanded the waste collection system by further dividing the districts into more lots for efficiency and to give opportunities for more waste management firms and contractors to participate in the system. Now the waste collection and management in Abuja city have become problematic and haphazard because AMAC is challenging the authority of the ministers, FCDA, and the BPP in the courts.
APC’s mobilisation and logistics were poorly coordinated. 24 hours to the election, the APC was lagging behind in terms of mobilisation and coordination. In fact, I know some young APC members from far away Adamawa State who mobilised themselves for logistics and campaign in AMAC to save the minister from a humiliating defeat; the AMAC result could have been severely more demeaning to the APC.
The election has come and gone- PDP is fully in control of three area councils from zero in 2016 and two in 2019, while the APC is left with three from five in 2016 and four in 2019. FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello, has a herculean task ahead to assert his powers and assist the APC in rekindling itself. The time has come for the FCT Minister and the APC Abuja to redefine and remodel their strategies.
Zayyad I. Muhammad, Abuja, [email protected]
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