Ahead of the 2023 General Elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and leaders of the registered political parties have adopted some proposals on modalities of creating new polling units (PUs) in the country.
This is contained in the communique of the consultative meeting between political parties and INEC held on Friday in Abuja.
The meeting agreed that there is merit in the INEC proposal of converting the existing and well-known Voting Points (VPs) and Voting Point Settlements (VPS) nationwide into full-fledged polling units to address the problem of voter access.
“Therefore, political parties fully support this solution. The commission should commence the process of converting the exiting VPs and VPS nationwide into full-fledged PUs immediately, based on clearly articulated guidelines to be developed by INEC and shared with stakeholders,” the communique said.
Speaking earlier at the opening of the meeting INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said that previous attempts at creating additional PUs failed because they were handled administratively and the timings also close to General Elections.
According to him, experience has shown that enhanced voter access to polling units increases turnout in elections and that not surprisingly, many countries expand access to polling units with every fresh registration of voters while others do so routinely or before every general election.
Yakubu said that 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.
He added that in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is 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.
“Unfortunately, the last time polling units were established was 25 years ago in 1996 by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON). There were 120,000 polling units to serve a projected population of about 50 million voters.
“Today, the number of registered voters is 84,004,084 and is set to rise after we resume Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) ahead of the 2023 General Election. Yet, the number of polling units remains static. In fact, the biggest category of registered voters on our data base (aged 18 to 25 years) were not even born when the current polling units were established a quarter of a century ago.
“The commission tried unsuccessfully to expand voter access to polling units in 2007, 2014 and before the 2019 General Election. However, these attempts were handled administratively. They also came too close to General Elections. Consequently, the Commission’s intention was not properly communicated and therefore misunderstood and politicised,” Yakubu said.
He said that learning from previous experience, the commission has now decided to engage with Nigerians by consulting widely and have worked hard in the last two months and produced a discussion paper entitled “The State of Voter Access to Polling Units in Nigeria”, prepared satellite imageries of the location of polling units across the country as well as pictures and videos to demonstrate the difficulties faced by voters on Election Day.
Also speaking the National Chairman, Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Dr. Leonard Nzenwa, said that the importance of additional PUs in the country would be in the best interest of democracy and national development of the country.
On his part, INEC National Commissioner in charge of Electoral Operations, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu, said that voter access to PUs goes beyond their establishment but also entails their locations in accessible places and ensuring that the environment of each PUs guarantees observance of the commission’s guidelines.
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