…Speaks on challenges of 2019 polls
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that it will create additional polling units after the 2019 general elections to decongest the existing ones and make voting less cumbersome for Nigerians during elections.
The INEC National Commissioner, Barr. Festus Okoye who stated this in Awka recently said that this has become necessary as successive INEC leadership lacked the political will to break up the existing polling units and create new ones so as to lessen the length of time voters had to spend at a polling station in order to cast their votes.
Okoye however informed that in the interim, the commission was going to break up the existing polling units and create voting points so that the elections can be concluded on time adding that on the strength of this development, the commission would appoint more than one collation officers for all the registration areas so that one collation officer would be dealing with the presidential election and the other one would be dealing with the House of Representative and Senatorial elections.
According to him,” We do not want a situation where Youth Corps members and students who are going to form the bulk of presiding officers and other ad-hoc staff to be in difficult places at 12 midnight on grounds that they are counting votes. So, we are going to break up these polling units, create voting points so that these things can finish on time.
“And also based on that, the Independent National Electoral Commission will appoint more than one collation officers for all the registration areas so that one collation officer will be dealing with the presidential election and the other one will be dealing with the House of Representative and Senatorial elections. So, we are working hard to make sure that we ease the pain of Nigerians and we are not playing politics with some of these things”.
On protests by some political parties over plans by the commission to break up the existing polling units and create voting points in this year’s election, Okoye who is also the Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC recalled that voting point settlements were created and used during the Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory adding that those political parties contested and participated even as some of them won and didn’t complain.
“All the voting points we are creating are voting points that were created to ease the pains of the Nigerian people so that they can get to the unit and have a pleasant voting experience. For those of you who have been to the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja before, you can see that new settlements keep emerging every day. Even up till this period, the whole of Gwarimpa had one polling unit but as at today, there are over 15,000 persons living in Gwarimpa. So, on the basis of that, will INEC put 15,000 voters in one polling unit? No, it makes no sense.
“As at today, one of the challenges we are facing is how to manage the polling units. We have 91 registered political parties, if the 91 registered political parties decide to send party agents to all the polling units; you know there will be confusion. So, we have a challenge and that is why we are breaking up the polling units into voting points.
“Wherever we have up to five hundred to seven hundred thousand registered voters, we create another voting point nearby and we appoint an APO voting point so that at the end of the day, all of them is doing the same thing and we pull all the votes together to the same polling unit and we count the votes so that we can ease the pains of Nigerians who have to stay late into the night in order to cast their votes and you can imagine, with 91 registered political parties and three elections, Presidential, Senatorial and House of Representatives”, he explained.
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