Ahead of the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has commenced the processes of creating additional polling units across the country.
The National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Festus Okoye, said this on Tuesday in Abuja at the end of the management meeting of the commission.
INEC had in August 2014 proposed to create additional 30,027 polling units, with the northern region getting 21,615 while the southern region gets 8,412 units.
The development led to controversy thus forcing INEC to jettison the plan.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had said in an interview that Nigeria is currently underserved with its 119,973 PUs and over 57,000 voting points (VPs).
Okoye, however, said on Tuesday that the commission would engage stakeholders on the planned expansion of voter access to the PUs.
According to him, for several weeks, the commission has been preparing for the national engagements to address the inadequacies of PUs in the country and the challenges they pose to election management.
“This is a national problem that calls for national consensus. For several years the commission has tried to address this fundamental challenge to democratic consolidation and election administration with minimal success. This has been mainly due to inadequate engagement between the commission and stakeholders.
“Consequently, the commission has had to resort to interim measures such as creating Voting Points at Polling Units nationwide and establishing Voting Point Settlements in the FCT,” Okoye said.
