The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says 593 polling units in Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have no registered voters.
Mahmood Yakubu, chairman, INEC, made the disclosure at the Expanded Stakeholders Security meeting of the FCT organised on Thursday in Abuja.
Mr Yakubu said that 1,328 polling units in the territory have a maximum of 50 voters, while 546 others have more than 1,000 registered voters.
He said INEC had decided that election would not hold in polling units without registered voters, adding that no material was produced for those units and no personnel would be deployed to them.
Mr Yakubu, however, said voting would take place in all the other polling units, noting that for congested polling units, INEC would deploy more BVAS (Card Reader) to ensure speedy accreditation of voters.
He also said INEC would deploy additional staff to the crowded units, adding that the commission had accepted the suggestion by security agencies for deployment of additional personnel to ensure peace and order.
“For transparency, the commission is making available hard copies of the details locations of these polling units to all stakeholders at this meeting, soft copies have also been uploaded to our website. By doing so, we want to achieve two objectives.
“First is to ensure that voters in the FCT and indeed all Nigerians are aware of these polling units and the arrangements made for them on election day.
“Secondly, to seek the support of all stakeholders to ensure that these polling units are populated ahead of the 2023 general election.
“We need the support of especially the traditional, community and religious leaders in this regard,’’ he said.
Mr Yakubu, who reiterated the importance of peace towards successful conduct of the area council election, assured that INEC would protect the integrity of the process.
“Our eyes are on all our officials, be they ad hoc or regular staff, to ensure that they strictly abide by the rules. All parties, candidates and their supporters should do the same,’’ he said.
Earlier speaking, the FCT Minister, Muhammad Bello, said the meeting which had in attendance all the 17 graded chiefs in the territory, was aimed at preparing ground for the successful conduct of the Feb. 12 FCT Area Council Election, to review 2021 and look at focus for 2022.
“In our review we found out that the collaborative security effort with neighboring states of the FCT is very effective.
“And this is one aspect that we will continue to improve upon because that is where all the security agencies within the FCT and their counterparts in neighboring states of Nasarawa, Niger and Kogi work together.
“Overall also we appreciated the efforts of all the agencies and in spite of what happened here and there within the rural communities we are quite satisfied with the efforts.
“And we identified areas where we are going to give them additional support and we intend to do so,’’ Mr Bello said.
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