The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared that there would be no voting at 240 polling places due to a lack of registered voters.
This was disclosed on Monday by INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu during a meeting with party leaders.
The change occurs just 12 days before the upcoming general election.
Prof Yakubu disclosed that there are 38 polling places in Imo State, which has the most, one in Edo, Kwara, Rivers, and Zamfara States where elections won’t take place.
With the exclusion of the 240 polling places, he stated that there will be roughly 176,606 polling places nationwide where the election will be held.
Yakubu also cautioned party representatives against engaging in combat on election day to prevent misunderstanding.
Following what the INEC termed as a successful mock accreditation, the commission has been urged to resolve the issues raised by the exercise in order to prevent some Nigerians from losing their right to vote.
Apparently, over the weekend, Yiaga Africa, an election monitoring organization, requested INEC to look into the issues raised by the fake accreditation exercise that was undertaken on February 4, 2023.
The group asserts that difficulties encountered during the fake accreditation could deny voters their right to vote on election day.
Samson Itodo, Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, stated that one of the issues were the INEC’s practice of moving voters to different polling places without giving them prior notice.
According to a report on Saturday YIAGA Africa gave the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) equipment that INEC would use to conduct the upcoming election a 98% rating.
It was reported that YIAGA Africa found that the BVAS worked correctly in 98% of polling units, whereas it malfunctioned in 2% of locations where the problems were rectified in its published findings on the mock accreditation process recently carried out by INEC.
According to the study, one of the biggest difficulties encountered throughout the exercise was the problem of missing names on the voters’ register.
