The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the 2023 elections may not hold in at least 10 Local Government Areas of Katsina State with 242 polling units and 142,261 registered voters due to the lingering insecurity.
INEC’s Head of Electoral Operations in Katsina, Husseni Jaafar, told a stakeholders’ meeting that “we have 242 polling units in 10 security-prone local government areas of Katsina State, with 142,261 registered voters. Before, there were 13 Local Government Areas that were under security threat.
“But in an attempt to ensure that elections are held in all the polling units of the State, every month we sit with all the electoral officers of the LGAs after they have consultation with security officers and stakeholders in their respective local governments and discuss the prevailing situation.
“As we keep on reviewing the situation based on the reports we receive from the electoral officers, presently we have only 10 local governments that we now confirm have security challenges that we cannot hold elections there.
“But all the same, nobody can say what will happen in these 10 local governments tomorrow, and despite the fact that we have this problem the commission is still working within the electoral law to come up with another plan that will enable all eligible voters to vote.”
Jaafar added that the commission had directed all the electoral officers of the affected local governments to liaise with security agencies, traditional and religious leaders in order to propose a safer place that would enable the commission to relocate the affected voters to cast their votes.
