By Gabriel Ewepu and Ezra Ukanwa

ABUJA- BARELY 48 hours to the Area Council Elections on March 9, residents of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, yesterday, vowed to vote for credible individuals irrespective of their political parties.

FCT FA says shall be open to all candidates in election screening

Residents in some of suburbs of the FCT bared their minds on developments and impacts made by chairmen and counselors of the various six Area Councils for the past four years.

A barber, Nungnan Amos, lamented that most of the promises made by subsequent chairmen were mere propaganda and that nothing achieved, and so most of them have resolved to critically examine the track record of various candidates vying to be elected chairmen and counselors.

Amos said: “From my opinion, I will say that we need to hold our politicians that are vying for various offices accountable to enable them to fulfil their mandates. Often, you will discover that they will come up and woo, cajole and deceive the electorate.

“After voting for them, they don’t fulfil even half of those promises. This time around, we the residents are voting individuals and not a party that is the new procedure now.

“Individuals that are with proven integrity and people that have formerly performed are whom we will vote for if they will come again.”

A photo studio manager in Karu, Peter Eze, also expressed disappointment over poor performance of council chairmen in infrastructural development at the suburbs of FCT, including high taxation.

“Challenges faced in AMAC include heavy taxation, inadequate electricity, poor sanitation, no free medical or low-cost medical care for the newborn babies, the aged and pregnant women. We hope that the incoming government should address all these problems.

“These people have not done much in Karu. For example, we still have load-shedding and inconsistent power supply. So, the issue of power supply has been a huge problem”, he added.

Meanwhile, one of the original inhabitants of FCT, from the Gbagyi tribe, Esther Shokwolo, urged INEC to be adequately prepared to conduct credible election with all logistics provided for Area Council polls.

“One of the major challenges we face during the election is from INEC. They always claim to be prepared, but they are not close to being ready to conduct a professional election. INEC is not meeting up with the schedule by coming in time.

“But, we discovered from previous elections that so many places in their various units came very late which hugely affected the election. The personnel are always late, not enough materials and you will discover that it affects the whole process”, she said.

Meanwhile, an environmentalist, Walter Esu, said voters in FCT would come out massively to exercise their franchise with high expectations from candidates they would vote for, but charged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to collaborate with law enforcement agencies to deploy high number of security personnel to man the various polling stations.