The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) on Tuesday backed the quest of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to create new polling units across the country.
With 84.04 million registered voters, based on the 2019 figure, the country has 119,973 PUs which were established by the defunct National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) in 1996.
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INEC two weeks ago commenced the process to create new polling units in consultations with stakeholders across the country.
INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu, yesterday, led a delegation of the commission to Kaduna, where he explained the importance of the creation of new polling units to the ACF chieftains.
The Secretary General of ACF, Murtala Aliyu, said the creation of the new polling units was for the national interest and not a particular section of the country.
He commended the INEC boss for the visit as he expressed ACF’s position supporting the commission to achieve its goal of making the country’s democracy stronger.
“The fact that since 1996 the polling units have not been increased, we feel that it is necessary for the convenience of democracy that these pulling units are increased,” he said.
Earlier, the INEC boss told the ACF chieftains that the commission had received 9,777 requests for creation of polling units across the country.
“This is a national problem because we have 119, 973 pulling units since 1996 and the number hasn’t changed, it was projected in 1996 to serve 50, million registered voters. By 1999 we had 84 million registered voters and the number of polling units remained the same. There is congestion, there are no pleasant voting experiences on Election Day and we also believe that this is related to the question of low voters’ turnout during elections,” he said.
