The Resident Electoral Commissioner in Ogun State, Olusegun Agbaje, has said that some of the newly created polling units in the state have not been effectively utilised by citizens in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration exercise.
To this end, he warned that the Independent National Electoral Commission may cancel idle polling units after the 2023 elections.
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Our correspondent reports that in May 2021, the INEC announced the creation of an additional 1,832 polling units as part of its voter access expansion.
With the development, Ogun State, which hitherto had 3,210 polling units, will now have a total of 5,042 polling units.
But the REC while addressing political party leaders at INEC Headquarters in Abeokuta on Thursday, during the election of the state chapter of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), noted that the commission had observed that the newly created pooling units are not being populated by the citizens.
Agbaje noted that the development affords citizens to register or transfer their registration to their nearest voting locations.
He said if those newly created units are not well populated and utilised ahead of next year general election, the commission has a right to cancel them.
Agbaje said “As we are all aware, the commission last year during the expansion of voters access to polling units, converted 1,832 voting points into full fledge polling units, thus, increasing the polling units in the state to 5,042 from the previous 3,210 that we had.
“It has, however, been observed that the new polling units are not being effectively utilised by the citizens and therefore call on you, to as part of your mobilisation efforts draw the attention of the public on the need to populate the new polling units by registering there, while those who have registered before are encouraged to transfer their voting locations to the one nearest to them in the ongoing CVR exercise.
“The importance of this is that if after the next year general election, those polling units are not populated, no voting takes place in such areas, it means that you don’t need them. That’s what you are telling the commission. And therefore the commission has a right to cancel such polling units.”
The REC urged party leaders to mobilise citizens towards ensuring full utilisation of the polling units to avoid them being taken away.
He urged the newly elected IPAC executives led by Ogunsanya Samson of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) to ensure their actions are guided by laws and international best practices.
During the election, Samson polled nine votes to defeat Sanyaolu Abayomi of the Action Alliance (AA) who had seven votes.
The new chairman pledged to unite all parties in the state and ensure that IPAC plays its advisory role in entrenching good governance in the state.
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