ELECTION 2023: INEC creates additional 56,872 Polling Units ..,….. Removes 749 polling units from Shrines, Religious Houses, Royal Palaces and Private Homes

Oru Leonard

In fulfilment of a pledge made few weeks back, the Independent National Electoral Commission has announced the creation of additional 56, 872 polling units across the country.

The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners on Wednesday.

“Nigeria now has a total of 176, 846 Polling Units from the initial 119, 973 following the conversion of voting points and voting points settlement to full-fledged Polling Units”, Yakubu said.

He said the commission had also removed 749 Polling Units from inappropriate facilities, with nine of them from shrines and several others from religious houses, royal palaces and private property.

Recalled the drawbacks faced by INEC and voters due to Increased registered voters and siting of polling units at the wrong places.

“As you are aware, the history of creating and expanding Polling Units in Nigeria has been long and complex. Their adequacy and accessibility in terms of number and location across the country were some of the challenges that had to be addressed in the interest of credible elections. Before 2010, the Commission operated on a round figure of approximately 120,000 Polling Units. However, a census undertaken by the Commission before the 2011 General Election arrived at the precise figure of 119,973 Polling Units. The Commission also made efforts to relocate many Polling Units from inappropriate places such as private residences and properties, palaces of traditional rulers and places of worship to public buildings accessible to voters, polling agents, observers and the media during elections”, he said

He noted that due to several unsucessful 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. The voting points were tied to the existing Polling Units and Voting Point Settlements.

He also said 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. 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.

Looking to the near future, the Commission is preparing to conduct the remaining off-season end of tenure elections ahead of the 2023 General Election. Already, activities listed in the timetable for the Anambra State Governorship election are being implemented. So too are those of the FCT Area Council election holding on 12th February 2022.