Arise News Director of News and Political Editor, Sumner Sambo has highlighted the reasons the African Democratic Congress, ADC, lost the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, election.
The All Progressives Congress, APC, emerged victorious in five of the six area council chairmanship positions in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
The newly elected chairmen are: Bwari: Joshua Ishaku (APC) Joshua Ishaku, won the chairmanship seat with 18,466 votes.
Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC): Chris Garki (APC)
Gwagwalada: Kasim Mohammed (PDP)
Kuje: Samuel Danjuma Shekwolo (APC)
Kwali: Nuhu Daniel Kwali (APC)
Abaji: Abdullahi Umar Abubakar (APC)
The elections reaffirmed APC’s dominance in the FCT, with only Gwagwalada Area Council falling to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, leaving the ADC with with nothing.
Speaking on Arise News, Sambo noted that the ADC chairmanship and vice chairmanship candidates not being indigenous persons must have affected the party’s chances.
He said, “And then it was more of like a Christian, Christian ticket. And so that may, in one way or the other, have angered people to have voted the way they did in their voting pattern,” he added.
“Now take a critical look at the presidential election results too that have also come out from the FCT since 2011. In 2011, Goodluck Jonathan won election in the FCT in 2015, Goodluck Jonathan won election in the FCT. Buhari lost, though Buhari won nationally in 2019. In 2023, FCT voters would then cast their vote to a third political party, that’s Labour Party, ditching the PDP, ditching the APC.
“Now you would have seen that there is a pattern of voting here and then in the National Assembly elections, PDP won in 2011, 2015, 2019 but in 2023 these voters in the FCT decided to go with the Labor Party, just like they did in the presidential election.
“The same thing for the House of Representatives seat. And these two people are non indigenous persons.
“Now let’s turn our attention to why the ADC would have lost the election in the AMAC. The Abuja Municipal Area Council is the administrative headquarters of the FCT and Nigeria, because that’s where the seat of the Presidency is. As a cosmopolitan area, so it has villages that attach to it.
“Now the ADC did not go to many of these villages to campaign. There are about 49 villages apart from districts that we have, and because the ADC was still coming up, they could not reach these places.”