The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has established a total of 56,872 new polling units in its expansion of voter access drive. This is the first time additional polling units have been created in Nigeria since 1996, when the Commission established the current 119,974 polling units. Efforts to create additional polling units since then have proved controversial until now, in spite of Nigeria\u2019s growing population and the apparent need for more polling units. To address this issue, INEC had created voting points in states and voting point settlements in the Federal Capital Territory, ahead of the 2015 general elections. These have been used in addition to the polling units to conduct elections since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During INEC\u2019s expansion of voter access to polling\nunits exercise which commenced in May 2021, the Commission converted voting\npoints and voting point settlements to polling units, and relocated polling\nunits which were not properly situated, such as those in private residences and\nproblematic terrains, to public and accessible locations, with adequate shelter\nand space, to accommodate election day officials and voters, as well as provide\nfor secrecy of ballots. In a meeting of the INEC Chairman, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood\nand Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), on Wednesday, June 16, in Abuja,\nMahmood stated that 749 polling were relocated from inappropriate locations,\nsome of which include 232 from private properties, 145 from royal palaces, 21 from\nchurches, nine from shrines and six from mosques. He stated that the others\nwere relocated due to congestion, communal conflict, emergence of new\nsettlements and general insecurity. This brings the total number of polling\nunits in Nigeria to 176,846. The creation of new polling units is coming just\nas INEC prepares to commence the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has established a total of 56,872 new polling units in its expansion of voter access drive. This is the first time additional polling units have been created in Nigeria since 1996, when the Commission established the current 119,974 polling units. Efforts to create additional polling units since then have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[361,360],"class_list":["post-2154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-872-polling-units","tag-inec-creates-additional-56"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2160,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/2160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}