THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has poured their concerned expression over the poor turnout of residents for the voter registration exercise in 1,750 newly established polling units in Katsina State.
INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Katsina State, Jibril Zarewa, disclosed this in an interview on Friday.He observed that one year after the commencement of the exercise, there was a poor turnout for registration in the newly established polling units.
“In May 2022 when we did analysis, we realised out of the 1,750 newly established polling units, about 1,200 units did not have more than 50 people who registered in each of them,” he said.“This registration involved transfers. Some of the polling units have zero registration, some have only one, some five while some have not more than 50 people who registered.“Although this can be attributed to the suspension of telecommunication networks in 17 of the 34 Local Government Areas for about five months due to the security problem.“Since the resumption of the exercise in March, out of the 1,750 polling units created, about 1,200 don’t have up to 50 people that registered in each of them.”he added. 
The REC therefore appealed to the people of those areas where the new polling units were created to go and register, noting that INEC was always ready for them.He explained that the additional polling units were created to serve the areas and decongest congested polling units.According to him, there were 4,902 polling units in Katsina State before the creation of the additional units, bringing the total number of polling centres in the state to 6,652 at the moment.
Furthermore, Zarewa noted that several PVCs are yet to be collected.“We had about three per cent of our cards collected, which means out of the 3.230 million PVCs we had, just about 50,000 were not collected.“As of Jan. 12, 2022, we have taken 53,000 from the headquarters, and just a few days ago, we have taken an additional 20,000 for people who made corrections,” he said.
