The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on Friday met with the chairmen and secretaries of political parties in Abuja, the nation’s capital. While the electoral body proposes the creation of more polling units, Professor Yakubu, said that the last time polling units were created was 25 years ago.
According to the INEC Chairman, the meeting which held at the INEC headquarters is the first engagement with party leaders aimed at enhancing voters’ access to polling units. He is of the opinion that the inadequate number of polling units in the last 25 years have contributed to voter apathy and a dwindling voter turnout.
Nigeria has continued to maintain 119,973 polling units since 1996, when the country had about fifty million registered voters. The figure has remained the same even when the numbers of registered voters have risen to over 88 million.
“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,” he said.