Four plaintiffs have asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to order the
postponement of the general elections scheduled for February 14 and 28
till when all eligible voters have their Permanent Voter Card.
The
plaintiffs who claimed that the Independent National Electoral
Commission had yet to issue them their PVC, are Asogo Torkuma Venatius,
Ola Solomon Oluwasanmi, Sunday Attah and Philip Agbese.
Insisting
that INEC was under statutory obligation to provide them with the PVC,
they are also asking the court to order the use of Temporary Voters Card
for those who are unable to collect their PVC.
They argued that should the election be allowed to go on, “millions of eligible voters stand the risk of being disenfranchised.”
Their
counsel, Mr. Amobi Nzelu, who filed their suit with number
FHC/ABJ/CS/DW/2015, joined the Independent National Electoral Commission
and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Bello Adoke, as the
first and second defendants respectively.
In the plaintiffs’
statement of claim, they said contrary to the promise by INEC in 2014
that it would issue all eligible voters with PVC before the February
2015 election, only few days to the polls, about half of eligible voters
were yet to obtain theirs.
The statement of claim read in part,
“Till date, over 40 percent of eligible voters who were registered by
the 1st defendant for the upcoming general elections were yet to receive
their Permanent Voter Card.
“There have been several protests
all over the country against the decision of the 1st defendant to go on
with the conduct of the general elections without distributing the
Permanent voters Card to millions of registered voters all over the
country.”
The statement added, “The Electoral Act does not make
the PVC a condition precedent for registered voters to cast their votes
at the general elections.”
The case has not been assigned to a judge and no date has been fixed for the hearing of the case.
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