The Attorney General of Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami on Tuesday shunned the technical session on the amendment of Electoral Act held by Joint National Assembly Committee on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The lawmakers expressed surprise at the absence of the AGF, who also did not send a representative.
The Chairman of the session, Senator Kabiru Gaya, however asked the Committee Secretariat to contact the office of the Attorney General of Federation over his absence at the meeting.
The session proceeded with the amendment on Tuesday by holding Technical Committee with the INEC chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood.
Speaking during the meeting, the INEC boss said that there was the need to create additional pooling units in the country and the commission discuss the matter of creating additional pooling units during their meeting today.
He said, “We need to create additional polling units, this is part of our discussion at the meeting of the commission today.
“We need to expand access of voters to polling units. The last time polling units were created was in 1996,” he told journalists at the end of the session.”
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Earlier, chairman of the joint session, Senator Kabiru Gaya (APC Kano South), said that the joint committees received a total number of 35 submissions and several other presentations, including that of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan and the Speaker, House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.
He listed other submissions as diaspora voting, full biometric for accreditation, electronic voting and electronic transmission of vote results, reduction on the cost conducting elections, electronic accreditation, continuous registration of voters, improvement of election administration, etc.
Presently, there are 119, 973 polling units and 57, 023 voting points across the country.
Recall that the current structure of polling units was established in 1996 and INEC subsequently created voting points prior to the 2011 general elections to enhance efficiency in election management by decongesting the units that had more than 750 registered voters.
