The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claims to have registered 126,763 new voters in Adamawa state.
According to the electoral board, new voters are individuals who have never registered and have never voted in previous elections but who will be able to vote in the 2023 elections and subsequent ones.
Kassim Gaidam, the INEC Resident Commissioner in Adamawa State, made the announcement Thursday at a stakeholders' meeting at his office in Yola, the state capital.
He remembered that continuous voter registration (CVR) began on June 28, 2021, last year.
He stated that the 126,763 completed online and in-person registrations are part of a total of 146,443 people who preregistered online, and that the CVR exercise will end next month, on June 30, to give people time to prepare.
Kassim Gaidam also stated that the INEC headquarters had printed and sent to Adamawa State 39,770 permanent voter cards (PVCs) of authentic new registrants since April 19, which he said had been dispersed to collection centers around the state.
However, he said that only 3,641 of the 39,770 new PVCs had been collected one month after they were made available, and he urged all voters who registered between June and December 2021 to do so.
"INEC changed the voting points (VPs) utilized in the 2019 general election to full-fledged polling units," the INEC Commissioner explained, adding that Adamawa State today has 4,104 polling units (PUs) throughout its 21 LGAs. "The total number of VPs was 1,495 while the total number of PUs was 2,609. "
He denied rumors that certain PUs had been relocated, emphasizing that "all of the 2,609 previously existing PUs remain where they were." The 1,495 VPs that were changed to PUs are still in the same RAs/wards as they were before. "