File photo of INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu.
By JOHN ONAH, Abuja-
The Chairman of The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on Friday met with the chairmen and secretaries of political parties in Abuja, the Nation’s capital to discuss the way forward for the proposed creation of addition polling units.
In his opening remark, the chairman who stated that he is proposing the creation of more polling units, noted that the last time polling units were created was 25 years ago.
According to the INEC Chairman, the meeting which held at the INEC headquarters is the first engagement with party leaders aimed at enhancing voters’ access to polling units.
He lamented that the inadequate number of polling units in the last 25 years have contributed to voter apathy and a dwindling voter turnout.
“Nigeria has continued to maintain 119,973 polling units since 1996, when the country had about fifty million registered voters, the figure remained the same even when the numbers of registered voters have risen to over eighty-eight million”.
“Unfortunately, the last time polling units were established was 25 years ago in 1996 by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON). There were 120,000 polling units to serve a projected population of about 50 million voters,” he said.
“Today, the number of registered voters is 84,004,084 and is set to rise after we resume Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) ahead of the 2023 General Election. Yet, the number of polling units remains static. In fact, the biggest categories of registered voters on our data base (aged 18 to 25 years) were not even born when the current polling units were established a quarter of a century ago”.
“Certainly, the Commission tried unsuccessfully to expand voter access to polling units in 2007, 2014 and before the 2019 General Election. However, these attempts were handled”.