Obidient Movement Accuses INEC, Hoodlums Of Wrecking AMAC Election
The Obidient Movement has formally rejected the results of last Saturday’s Abuja Municipal Area Council chairmanship election, declaring the exercise a “brazen assault” on democracy and calling for a full and transparent review of the outcome, even as the group mourns the killing of one of its polling agents during what it has described as a violent and deeply compromised electoral process.
The National Coordinator of the Obidient Movement Worldwide, Dr Yunusa Tanko, made the position of the group known on Monday while addressing journalists at the movement’s secretariat in Abuja. Tanko alleged widespread irregularities, voter suppression, deliberate intimidation of party agents, and outright violence during the poll — conditions he said rendered the results fundamentally untrustworthy.
The rejection comes as results from the Federal Capital Territory’s six area council elections showed a commanding performance by the ruling All Progressives Congress, which won five of the six chairmanship seats on offer. The APC claimed victory in the AMAC, Abaji, Bwari, Kwali, and Kuje area councils, while the Peoples Democratic Party secured the lone opposition win in Gwagwalada. The elections were conducted to fill six chairmanship positions and 62 councillorship seats across the territory.
At the centre of Monday’s press conference was a moment of grief. Tanko told journalists that the elections had claimed the life of Musa Abubakar, popularly known as “Dege,” a polling agent for the African Democratic Congress — the party the Obidient Movement had backed in the AMAC chairmanship race — who was killed at the Gwagwa polling unit while resisting what Tanko described as an attempt by hoodlums to seize ballot boxes and manipulate the outcome of the vote.
“Tragically, this campaign of fear culminated in the ultimate price: one of our most dedicated agents, a patriot named Musa Abubakar (Dege), was brutally murdered at his post in the Gwagwa polling unit for resisting a daring attempt by hoodlums to hijack ballot boxes and subvert the will of voters,” Tanko said.
He added that the killing sent a wave of panic through other polling agents on the ground, many of whom fled their posts after witnessing the attack. “The fear factor was also what they used in threatening other agents to the point where they fled, especially after seeing one of their own killed and lying in his own blood,” he said.
Describing the deceased as a devoted family man and not merely a political casualty, Tanko was emphatic that the matter must not be swept aside. “Let me be clear: Musa’s death is not just a statistic. He was a husband, a father, a son, and a Nigerian who believed in a better future. His blood is on the hands of those who orchestrated this electoral fraud and the thugs they hired to enforce it,” he stated.
The movement praised the ADC chairmanship candidate, Dr Moses Paul — popularly known as Dr Mo — for visiting the family of the deceased agent shortly after his death to express solidarity and provide support. It called on security agencies to investigate the killing and bring those responsible to justice, including the alleged masterminds of the electoral violence.
-The Obidient Movement — a civic and political movement that rose to national prominence during Peter Obi’s 2023 presidential campaign on the Labour Party platform — had in the lead-up to Saturday’s election thrown its support behind Dr Moses Paul, the ADC’s candidate for the AMAC chairmanship seat. Tanko described the backing as part of a broader coalition for change, inspired by what he called the vision of a new Nigeria.
“As many of you know, the Obidient Movement and indeed fellow Nigerians threw their full weight behind the ADC candidate, Dr Moses Paul, popularly known as Dr Mo. Inspired by the vision of a new Nigeria, our supporters mobilised with unprecedented passion, creating a powerful coalition for change,” Tanko said.
He insisted that the movement’s ground intelligence on election day showed the ADC candidate ahead of his rivals, and that the declared results did not reflect the votes actually cast. “We were clearly ahead in the polls, and the will of the people was undeniable. Yet, what we witnessed was a criminal subversion of that will,” he alleged.
The movement specifically accused unnamed individuals and groups of orchestrating electoral fraud on a scale it said amounted to the theft of a mandate in broad daylight. It demanded that the Independent National Electoral Commission act immediately to address the allegations and restore public confidence in the electoral process.
Tanko credited former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi with boosting voter participation in the AMAC election, noting that Obi had called on his supporters to come out and vote for the ADC candidate after the party’s leadership reached out to him. The coordinator said Obi’s intervention produced a noticeable, if modest, uptick in turnout compared with previous FCT local government elections.
“HE Peter Obi showed his capacity with the love of the people who came out to support the candidates of the party within a short time of joining the ADC by calling his supporters to come out and vote. This explains the marginal increase in voters when compared with the previous FCT local government elections,” Tanko said.
Despite this, turnout remained strikingly low. Tanko put the figure at just seven per cent, and he laid partial blame for this at the feet of INEC. He alleged that the electoral commission had reconfigured and subdivided polling units ahead of the election without adequately informing voters of the changes, leaving many unable to locate where they were supposed to cast their ballots.
“The Independent National Electoral Commission contributed to the voters’ apathy by dividing the polling units without informing the people, making it difficult for voters to locate their polling units. Many left in frustration and not voting,” Tanko said.
INEC has not, as of the time of this report, responded publicly to the specific allegations raised by the Obidient Movement regarding the polling unit reorganisation or the broader claims of irregularities.
Saturday’s elections represented a significant consolidation of APC’s grip on the Federal Capital Territory at the local government level. The ruling party’s victories in five of the six area councils — AMAC, Abaji, Bwari, Kwali, and Kuje — reinforce its political dominance in a territory that falls directly under the authority of the federal government, whose minister is appointed by the presidency.
The solitary PDP victory in Gwagwalada is notable, though it does not fundamentally alter the balance of political control across the FCT’s council system. The elections were, by most independent accounts, characterised by low public enthusiasm, a pattern that has become increasingly common in Nigerian local government elections, which critics argue are routinely managed in ways that favour incumbents and reduce the stakes for ordinary voters.
The Obidient Movement’s challenge — centred on AMAC — is the most prominent formal contestation of the results so far. Whether the group proceeds to file a petition before the relevant electoral tribunal will likely determine how far the dispute travels legally.
The Obidient Movement emerged as one of the most consequential grassroots political mobilisations in Nigeria’s recent history during the 2023 general elections, channelling widespread public frustration with the two dominant parties — the APC and the PDP — into mass support for Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi. Though Obi did not win the presidency, the movement demonstrated an unprecedented capacity for youth mobilisation and civic engagement, particularly in urban centres.
Since the 2023 elections, the movement has sought to sustain its relevance by engaging in sub-national electoral contests, sometimes working in coalition with third-party candidates. Its decision to back the ADC candidate in the AMAC chairmanship election, and to leverage Peter Obi’s network in doing so, reflects a continuing effort to translate the political energy of 2023 into electoral outcomes at lower tiers of government.
The killing of a polling agent during a local government election, if verified and prosecuted, would represent one of the more serious documented incidents of electoral violence in the FCT in recent memory. Nigerian civil society groups and international observers have for years raised concerns about the safety of election workers and party agents — particularly in lower-profile elections that attract less media and observer scrutiny than federal contests.