To overcome overcrowding at the polling units, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will from Friday start holding consultative meetings with different stakeholders in the electoral process on how to expand voter access to Polling Units across the country. A polling unit is a place where voters cast their ballots in elections. The consultative meetings
To overcome overcrowding at the polling units, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will from Friday start holding consultative meetings with different stakeholders in the electoral process on how to expand voter access to Polling Units across the country. A polling unit is a place where voters cast their ballots in elections.
The consultative meetings will involve political parties, civil society organisations, religious leaders, traditional institutions, labour unions, socio-cultural organisations and various arms of the federal and state governments.
According to INEC’s National Commissioner and Chair, Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Mr. Festus Okoye, in a statement, the Commission had for the past several weeks been preparing for the national engagements to discuss the inadequacies of Polling Units in Nigeria and the challenges they pose to election management.
The statement identified some of the challenges potentially disenfranchising millions of Nigerians and posing health risks in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as over-crowding, unserved populations and poor locations.
Okoye said: “For several years, the Commission has tried to address this fundamental challenge to democratic consolidation and election administration with minimal success. This has been mainly due to inadequate engagement between the Commission and stakeholders.
“Consequently, the Commission has had to resort to interim measures such as creating Voting Points at Polling Units nationwide and establishing Voting Point Settlements in the Federal Capital Territory.
“These engagements will afford an opportunity for the Commission to consult with stakeholders in order to build a genuine national consensus to address the problem of declining voter access to Polling Units.”
He added: “In the next few weeks, the Commission plans to engage with diverse stakeholders including political parties, civil society organizations, religious leaders, traditional institutions, labour unions, socio-cultural organizations, various arms of the federal government, as well as state governments.
“Among the burning issues to be addressed at these consultations are the challenges that declining access to Polling Units pose to democracy and election management in Nigeria.”
The Commission appealed to all stakeholders in the electoral process in Nigeria to cooperate with it to address the issue.
Several communities in Nigeria, especially in the fast developing areas suffer acute shortages of polling units leading to several of voters having to travel several kilometers to cast their vote on election days. Others unable to cope with the stress simply disenfranchise themselves by staying put in their homes on election days..
By INEC regulation, each polling unit is not supposed to have more than 500 registered voters on the average. But there are polling units with as much as 2,000 or 3,000 registered voters across the country. Another area which will also need to be addressed is the delineation of wards which, however, can only be done by the National Assembly.
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