INEC bows to pressure, suspends allocation for 30,000 poling units

By Jide Ajani

Abuja—In what appears to be a victory for common sense and decency, National Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, has bowed to pressure and suspended the execution of the allocation of the additional 30,000 Polling Units, PUs, across the country until after the 2015 general elections.

Prof Attahiru Jega, INEC Chairman

The creation and allocation of the additional 30,000 PUs, had indeed become controversial, created a regional division in the Commission, and was already a matter of litigation.

However, Professor Jega, after a widely publicised meeting of the Commission yesterday, sent out a message to Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, across the country announcing the suspension of the exercise.

Jega’s message read:

“REC, The Commission met today and reviewed reports from the State Offices on Reconfiguration and Creation of Additional PUs. The Commission decided, in view of time constraint and the controversy over the matter that is overheating the polity, to:

*Suspend the creation of new PUs until after the 2015 general elections;

*Continue with the existing practice of using Voting Points to decongest PUs;

*As much as possible relocate all PUs in unsuitable locations to more suitable locations and

*Ensure that as much as possible PUs in open spaces are moved to classrooms or suitable enclosures, such as tents.

Before yesterday’s suspension of the exercise, the polity had become overheated and was already divided along the North/South divide.

Sources close to the Commission disclosed to Vanguard that the seeming crisis that heralded the last phase of the provision of the Permanent Voter’s Cards, PVCs, to members of the voting public “may not be unconnected to the desperation to see through the allocation”.

The allocation of the 30,000 had seen the North getting 21,615 and the South, 8,412.

Dr. Frederick Fasehun, founder of the Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, and leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, in a suit against INEC had asked the court to, as a matter of urgency, put a stop to the plan, declaring that the purported creation of additional 30,000 Polling Units in Nigeria by INEC was not only ultra vires, unconstitutional, mala fide, null, but void and has no effect whatsoever, adding that the allocation of what he termed, a mere 8,412 polling units out of 30,000 additional polling units to the South, was discriminatory against the states in Southern Nigeria and has put the voters in that part of the country at a disadvantage.

The 30,000 additional polling units were distributed as follows: North West-7,906; North East- 5, 291; North Central-6,318; South East-1, 167; South West- 4, 160 and South-South-3,087.

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INEC bows to pressure, suspends allocation for 30,000 poling units