java cannot understand the staement enter code example

Example: java 51 variable error

public static Rand searchCount (int[] x) 
{
    int a ; 
    int b ; 

    ...   

    for (int l= 0; l<x.length; l++) 
    {
        if (x[l] == 0) 
        a++ ;
        else if (x[l] == 1) 
        b++ ;
    }

    ...   

}