With less than 10 days to the commencement of national elections in Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission on Wednesday said no internally displaced person in Niger State will be allowed to vote.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner in Niger State, Prof. Samuel Egwu, made this known during an interactive session with newsmen at the state INEC headquarters in Minna.
Egwu said only the physically challenged will be given preference to vote in the state.
He said: “As at today, there will be IDP voting in eight states across Nigeria, officially, and Niger State is not part of them.
“There won’t be voting in IDP camps across Niger because there are no official IDP camps.
“Most of them prefer to live with their relatives in other communities and so, there was no way they could be captured and allotted polling units.
“However, provisions have been made for the physically challenged amongst us, including pregnant women and old people, so that they can actively participate without stress.”
Prof. Egwu also disclosed that out of the 22,839 requests received for permanent voters card transfer, only 6,496 persons have collected.
He said: “This number is only 28 percent of the total.
“In all, we have done continuous registration of 400,000 new voters plus the 2,390,035 numbers inherited in 2015, making a total 2,167,788 PVCs have been collected since 2011 till date.”
It should be noted that in Niger State, out of the 31 governorship candidates, 29 are male, while two are female.
Also for Deputy Governors, 24 are male and only seven females.
For the Senate, 33 are male and for female, with 126 House of Representatives having 117 male and nine female.
In the state House of Assembly election, the are 343 male and 28 female.