INEC registers 126,763 new voters in Adamawa

By Musa Baba Adamu

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has registered 126,763 new voters in Adamawa State.

The electoral body said the new entrants into the voters are those who never registered and have never voted in past elections but could now vote in the 2023 elections and subsequent ones.

The INEC Resident Commissioner in Adamawa State, Kassim Gaidam, made the disclosure Thursday while addressing a stakeholders’ meeting at his office in the state capital, Yola.

He recalled that the ongoing continuous voter registration (CVR) started last year, June 28, 2021.

He explained that the 126,763 completed online and in-person registrations are among the online preregistration of 146, 443 people and that the CVR exercise will end next month, June 30 to allow for time to get all PVCs out before the 2023 elections.

Kassim Gaidam also announced that the INEC headquarters had printed and delivered to Adamawa State 39,770 permanent voter cards (PVCs) of genuine new registrants, which he said had been distributed to collection centres across the state since last month, April 19.

He said, however, that of the 39,770 new PVCs released, only 3,641 had been collected one full month after being made available and appealed to all voters who registered between June and December 2021 to collect their PVCs.

The INEC Commissioner announced that Adamawa State currently has 4,104 polling units (PUs) across its 21 LGAs, explaining, “INEC converted the voting points (VPs) used in the 2019 general election to full-fledged polling units. The VPs were 1,495 while the PUs were 2,609.”

He said there was no truth to the speculation that some PUs had been relocated, stressing that, “All the 2,609 hitherto existing PUs remain where they were. The 1,495 VPs converted to PUs also remain in the same RAs/wards where the VPs existed.”