Voters have commenced voting for candidates of their choice in the Plateau North Senatorial and Jos North/ Bassa federal constituency elections all in Jos North Senatorial district
Recall that the Appeal Court sitting in Abuja sometime in November 2023, nullified the elections of former Senate minority leader, Simon Mwadkwon and member representing Bassa/Jos North Federal Constituency all of the People’s Democratic Party, on the ground of non-party structure.
The Appellate Court also ordered INEC to conduct rerun elections within 90 days directing all parties to participate.
During a press conference last month to mark the commencement of activities for the by- election, the INEC resident electoral commissioner incharge of Plateau state, Dr. Oliver Agundu said the election would be conducted in six local government areas of Plateau North.
These include Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Jos East, Jos North, Jos South, and Riyom, which together have 73 Registration Areas (RAs) and 2,266 Polling Units (PUs), with a total of 1,234,761 registered voters. Out of these, 1,167,001 have collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
Agundu added that the Jos North/Bassa Federal Constituency within the same Plateau North senatorial district consists of two local government areas of Jos North and Bassa with 30 registration areas (RAs) and 1,209 polling units (PUs), totaling 647,409 registered voters with a PVC collection of 614,956.
As at 7am sensitive and non sensitive election materials have been sorted out and been distributed to polling units across the Senatorial district.
Business Day gathered that, elections started almost the same time across the district, amidst low turn out of people.
The turnout was not very impressive, as compared to the general election that witnessed large turnout of voters.
In most of the areas visited by our Correspondent, there was voter apathy, in spite of the early delivery of election materials.
Most of the polling units visited, including Hill station Junction 2, Polling Unit-023, Hill station Junction, polling unit 002 Jenta Adamu registration area, electoral officers were busy attending to few voters that came.
Maria Adeleye, the presiding officer of Hill station polling unit 023 told BusinessDay day that materials arrived early and election also commenced, adding that “we came early and everything is working fine.
A voter who preferred anonymity said “I came here as early as 6am but we are just less than 10 here”.
He said, as at the time he casted his vote, it was 8:15am, as compared to the last election, when the elections started about 5 hours difference.
A party agent also said “we arrived at the local Collation Center, the materials were distributed by 7:20am and elections commenced by 8:5am.
“It is peaceful and people are coming out and we hope that everything will end well.”
