The Katsina State Independent National Electoral Commission will begin the distribution of sensitive materials to the 34 local government areas in the state on Wednesday (today) for Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly polls.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Alhaji Jibrin Zarewa, told The PUNCH in an exclusive interview in Katsina that by the morning of February 23, each polling centre would have materials ready to start voting.
Katsina, which is President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state, has 4,902 Polling Units and 1,750 Voting Points, bringing the total of Voting Centres to 6,652.
Zarewa explained that the procedure adopted was to move the electoral materials from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria in Katsina on Wednesday (today) to the local government areas.
He added that on Thursday morning (tomorrow), the materials would be separated according to the number of wards in the state, while on Friday morning, electoral officers in the LGAs would take possession of the materials for disruption to the wards and voting centres in the early hours of February 23.
“This Wednesday (today), we will move them from CBN to local government areas.
“On Thursday, which is tomorrow, we will separate them ward-by-ward, while in the morning on Friday, we will give them to the electoral officers in the local governments and the presiding officers in that order.
“At the wards, refresher training will be conducted for the ad hoc staff, while the materials will be moved to the polling units very early on Saturday morning; that is February 23″, he said.