The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Thursday, June 30, 2022, revealed that it registered 1,955,657 voters for the July 16, 2022, Osun governorship election.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, Prof. Abdulganiyu Raji, disclosed this at the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Dialogue (NCSSRD) on Osun Governorship and Review of the Ekiti Governorship Election 2022.
Raji said that the current number of registered voters is higher than the 2019 figure of 1.6 million. With the commission also distributing 1,443,969 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
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He said that 511,688 PVCs were yet to be collected by their owners, disclosing that distribution is still in progress and that preparations for the poll are in top gear.
He expressed the hope that the election would be hitch-free, given the lessons so far learnt from the recent polls in other states.
“We started with the review of the 2018 elections, looking at the gains, losses, mistakes and we learnt lessons from them. Where we did well, we leveraged that to move on.
“We also previewed the 2022 governorship election and the 2023 elections to see areas we need to improve on.
“In Osun, we had 3,010 polling units during the 2018 and 2019 elections. With the conversion of the voting points, we had an additional 753 polling units.
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“This gave us the 3,763 polling units we now have in the state,’’ Raji said.
According to him, the commission conducted an exercise that helped to identify security flash points based on the review of the 2018 election.
He said that the commission had also marked the difficult terrain of the state and worked out the logistics, stating that the welfare of the ad hoc staff and security agencies had been provided.
Raji also revealed that INEC did not store sensitive materials in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) during the Ekiti governorship election, as the commission had already secured a safe place to store them for the election.