The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced the addition of 56,872 more polling units in various parts of the country.

INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, made the announcement on Wednesday at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.

“After wide-ranging consultations with stakeholders and fieldwork by our officials, the 56,872 voting points and voting point settlements were converted and added to the existing 119,974 Polling Units.

“Consequently, the commission is glad to report that 25 years since the current polling units were created in 1996, the hard nut is finally and successfully cracked after several unsuccessful attempts. Nigeria now has 176,846 full-fledged polling units,” he said.

The INEC Chairman attributed the establishment of voting points and voting point settlements across the states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to the several unsuccessful attempts to create additional polling units.

“The voting points were tied to the existing polling units and voting point settlements. The number of registered voters in a polling unit and the voting point settlement in the FCT, was used to determine their voting points, based on the upper and lower thresholds of 500 and 750 voters respectively,” he said.