The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been asked to immediately commence the process of converting already existing Voting Points and Voting Points Settlements into full fledged Polling Units.
Ekwi Ajide of our Abuja Bureau reports that the advice was contained in a six points communique signed by leaders of seventeen political parties including the APC and PDP at the end of a one day engagement and consultation with the Commission on the need to expand voter access to polling units.
The communique, further stated that given the current state of voter access to polling units, in Nigeria, expanding access to polling units is fundamental to the exercise of the right to vote and to free, fair and credible elections.
Earlier in his opening speech, the National Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, expressed worry about the dwindling number of polling units in the country as against the increasing number of voters adding that the one hundred and twenty thousand polling units in use were established in 1996, to serve fifty million voters but today, the number of registered voters has increased to eighty four million, four thousand and eighty four, 84,004,084 which has the tendency of further increasing with the resumption of Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) ahead of the 2023 General Election, yet, the number of polling units remains static.
Prof. Yakubu lamented that the biggest category of registered voters on the Commission’s data base are those born after the polling units were established aged between eighteen and twenty five years saying that the inadequate number of polling units has resulted in low voter turnout in elections in Nigeria.
He said political parties, INEC and all stakeholders need to do more in the areas of voter and civic education, voter mobilisation and inclusivity as well as expanding voter access to polling units as increase in voter population, emergence of new settlements, urbanisation, distance to existing polling units, difficult terrain and other factors require constant review to give the voter a pleasant experience on Election Day especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, where it has become necessary to decongest polling units to minimise overcrowding and reduce the long distances voters travel often in overcrowded means of transport in order to vote during elections.
According to a National Commissioner, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu, inadequate polling units are depriving Nigerians of their fundamental democratic rights as according to him, it is not enough to have the right to vote without having a place to exercise the right.
While counting late commencement of electoral processes, electoral violence and disruptions as some of the consequences of inadequate polling units, Prof Ibeanu said that between 1999 and 2019, voter turnout in Nigeria fell by seventeen percent while in neighbouring Ghana, at the same period, voter turnout increased by the same percentage because they have more polling units.
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