{"id":82956,"date":"2026-02-22T18:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=82956"},"modified":"2026-02-22T18:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T18:10:42","slug":"low-voter-turnout-shadows-fct-area-council-elections-emefiele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/02\/22\/low-voter-turnout-shadows-fct-area-council-elections-emefiele\/","title":{"rendered":"Low Voter Turnout Shadows FCT Area Council Elections -Emefiele"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Olokuta Rofiat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Concerns have emerged over the poor turnout during Saturday\u2019s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Area Council elections.<\/p>\n<p>David Emefiele, Programmes Officer of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), described voter participation as \u201csignificantly below expectations,\u201d warning that low engagement undermines grassroots democracy in Abuja. Many polling units recorded minimal activity, with only a fraction of registered voters casting ballots.<\/p>\n<p>Observers cited voter apathy, limited public interest, and movement restrictions ahead of the polls as key factors for the low turnout.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this, the elections were largely peaceful, and collation of results continued across the six area councils, which will determine the new council chairmen and ward representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Olokuta Rofiat Concerns have emerged over the poor turnout during Saturday\u2019s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Area Council elections. David Emefiele, Programmes Officer of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), described voter participation as \u201csignificantly below expectations,\u201d warning that low engagement undermines grassroots democracy in Abuja. Many polling units recorded minimal activity, with only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":82957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,172,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82958,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82956\/revisions\/82958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}