Awka – The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Rivers State has announced the conversion of two thousand, four hundred and twenty four voting points in the state to polling units.
INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Rivers State, Obo Effanga made the disclosure to newsmen shortly after the stakeholders interactive forum on the Expansion of Access to Polling Units held in Portharcourt on Saturday
The development brings the total number of polling units in the state to six thousand, eight hundred and sixty-six.
The Rivers INEC REC explained how the new polling units were created.
“The threshold we used is that if there up to 750 registered voters in a polling unit, we will create a voting point and in multiple of five hundreds after them, we create more voting points. So in very large polling units, you have up to 4,5, 6 voting points. So each of the voting points that existed, we simply converted them to polling units.”
According to him, the information has been sent to the national headquarters of the Commission for onward collation with those of other states and signing off.
“In Rivers State before now, we had four thousand, four hundred and forty-two polling units and this exercise came up with additional two thousand, four hundred and twenty-four polling units, which is just a conversion of existing voting points into polling units,” he said.
Effanga also said the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, starting June 28 will allow for voters to be assigned the new polling units.
“Now, we are starting the CVR and this will allow for the assigning of voters to these new polling units. So new people who haven’t registered can come out and register and they will be assigned to any of the polling units. From the existing polling units, which is made up, based on the number of registered voters, we will also be able to distribute them to the new polling units. And we also encourage people who want to transfer their voter’s cards to specific polling units to also do so,” he said.
Members of various political parties, civil society organizations, and other interest groups attended the stakeholders meeting.
