At the Karu Site 1V/CBN Quarters polling booth, Daily Times found out that out of a total of 1,663 registered voters, only 32 people voted.
An INEC officer there who didn?t want his name in print lamented that they were there since morning and only that paltry number of people voted.
Out of the 32 votes that were entered into the Form EC 8A (1), led with 10 votes. ANPP got 7 votes, ACN got 3, CPC 6 and PDP 6 votes.
When the votes were entered, the copies of the result were given to Police, NSCDC, Immigration and other monitors as well as all agents of the parties that were present.
After checking some other polling stations, Daily Times went to the FCT INEC Headquarters located in Karu where a National Commissioner of the Commission in charge of FCT, Niger, Kaduna and Kwara Dr. Chris Iyimoga confirmed in an exclusive interview with Daily Times that the turn-out was surprisingly very poor.
Iyimoga told Daily Times that a polling boot in Karshi with about 1,400 registered voters saw only 300 people that actually voted. He said the same scenario played out in most of the polling boots across the FCT.
Asked what could be responsible for the low turn- out, the INEC top officer said it is voter apathy which he attributed to several factors including low performance by people in government.
According to him, people may feel there was no need to go out and wait inside the sun all day when those elected would eventually fail to deliver quality service.
In addition, Iyimoga said candidates for the election did not really go out to canvass for votes from the electorate, therefore putting a lot of people in the dark about the elections. He said the duty of INEC is to sensitize the people on electoral procedures and not to campaign for candidates.
Asked if there was no deliberate plan by INEC to disenfranchise the people by not placing their names at the voters registere, he said the voters register was displayed months before the election for people to verify their names, saying that most Nigerians did not deem it necessary to go and check their names.
On the validity of the outcome of the election, in view of the very low turn- out, Dr. Iyimoga said there was no provision in the law establishing INEC on minimum voter expectation and therefore any number of voters that was recorded would be seen as adequate to determine result on the basis of simple majority.
The results of the elections are being awaited as voting has ended.
