INEC Removes 749 Polling Units From Religious, Royal, Other Places

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…Says, Nigeria now has 176,846 polling Units

BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday said it has successfully removed 749 Polling Units from inappropriate locations to appropriate public facilities or open spaces in line with its policy to guarantee unencumbered access to Polling Units for all voters.

It therefore said that Nigeria now has a total of 176,846 full-fledged Polling Units.

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INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who stated these at a meeting on Wednesday with the Commission’s Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC), said that of this figure, 232 were removed from private properties, 145 from royal palaces, 6 from Mosques, 21 from Churches and 9 from Shrines.

Yakubu said that the remaining 336 Polling Units were relocated for various reasons which include distance, difficult terrain, congestion, communal conflict, new settlements and general insecurity.

He also said that following several unsuccessful attempts to create additional Polling Units despite the obvious pressure from increased number of registered voters, the Commission established Voting Points and Voting Point Settlements across the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as a pragmatic response to necessity.

Yakubu explained that the voting points were tied to the existing Polling Units and Voting Point Settlements, adding that the number of registered voters in a Polling Unit and the Voting Point Settlement in the FCT, was used to determine their Voting Points, based on the upper and lower thresholds of 500 and 750 voters respectively. The INEC Chairman further said; “These were also the limits used for the 2019 General Election. The number of new Polling Units in a State is the number of Voting Points aggregated from those Polling Units having Voting Points.

“Furthermore, it was discovered that one Polling Unit in Lagos State had been wrongly categorized as a Voting Point and the error was corrected. With this adjustment, the actual number of approved Polling Units came to 119,974.

“As a result, the Commission arrived at the exact figure of 56,563 Voting Points in addition to 309 Voting Point Settlements in the FCT, making a total of 56,872 Voting Points,” he said.

Yakubu also said that after wide ranging consultations with stakeholders and fieldwork by INEC officials, the 56,872 Voting Points and Voting Point Settlements were converted and added to the existing 119,974 Polling Units.

“Consequently, the Commission is glad to report that 25 years since the current Polling Units were created in 1996, the hard nut is finally and successfully cracked after several unsuccessful attempts. Nigeria now has 176,846 full-fledged Polling Units,” he declared.

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