As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has highlighted reasons why elections won’t take place in some polling units across states of the federation and the FCT, today’s insight would be to take the enlightening path and encourage all electorates to confirm the availability of their polling units and make regional comparisons to the national perspective on the election as well.
In a meeting with the national leaders of political parties on Monday in Abuja, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, said that 240 polling places will not be used for the elections. According to the INEC director, there are four reasons why the polls won’t take place in the affected polling units.
All electors assigned to new polling places will receive text messages from the commission containing their polling places’ details
1. No new registered voters in the affected Pus
The INEC Chairman claims that no new voters have registered in the affected voting places, and no voters have moved to those polling places. “During the most recent continuous voter registration, no new registrants selected the polling places, and no existing voters expressed interest in shifting to them, primarily for security reasons. “In these voting units, there won’t be any elections, Yakubu added.
2. New number of polling units
The general election for 2023 will now only be held in 176,606 polling places as opposed to the original 176,846, according to INEC chairman.
3. New number of polling units
In addition, Yakubu noted that INEC increased the number of polling places from 119,973 to the current 176,846 in 2021. He also noted that they are now allocating voters across the polling places in order to avoid congestion. Voters must be reassigned to fresh polling places in the neighbourhood in order to do this. This must be done after consulting the voters where they are geographically apart. Our state offices all around the country have already done this. However, 240 polling places throughout 28 states and the FCT do not have any registered voters.
Read also: Why election will not hold in 240 polling units – INEC
4. Know your polling unit
The INEC Chairman further advised electors to check the locations of their polling places through a special portal on the commission’s website. He also mentioned that all electors assigned to new polling places will receive text messages from the commission containing their polling places’ details. We have also created a list of these people, and our state offices will publicise it widely, especially for individuals who might not have given their phone numbers during voter registration or whose numbers might have changed.
Regional comparism: What does this mean for each geo-political regions
South west which happens to be the strong hold of the Ruling party shows Ekiti, Ogun, Osun and Oyo all have zero case of polling units with no registered voters while Lagos, Ondo have 3 and 2 resptively.
Cross River have zero case of polling units with no registered voters while Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Rivers have 2, 4, 1 and 1 respectively.
Gombe have zero case of polling units with no registered voters while Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Taraba and Yobe have 4, 6, 12, 34 and 11 respectively.
Kogi had zero case of polling units with no registered voters while Benue, Niger, Kwara, Nasarawa, Plateau ad FCT have 10, 10, 1,11 and 6, 11 respectively.
Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara have 3, 8, 10, 12, 5, 8 and 1 number of polling units with no registered voters respectively.
Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo have 12, 6, 4, 4, and 38 polling units with no registered voters, respectively.
