February 3, 2015
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- Law News
Four Nigerians have asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to order the postponement of the general elections scheduled for February 14 and 28, 2015 till when all eligible voters would have been issued their Permanent Voter Cards.
The four argued that “millions of eligible voters stand the risk of being disenfranchised” should the elections allowed to hold on the scheduled dates.
The plaintiffs, who claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission had yet to issue them their PVCs, are Asogo Torkuma Venatius, Ola Solomon Oluwasanmi, Sunday Attah and Philip Agbese.
Insisting that INEC was under statutory obligation to issue them with the PVC, the four are also asking the court to order the use of Temporary Voter Cards for those who are unable to collect their PVCs.
Their counsel, Mr. Amobi Nzelu, who filed the suit with number FHC/ABJ/CS/DW/2015, joined INEC 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 PVCs before the February 2015 elections, about half of eligible voters were yet to obtain theirs few days to the polls.
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 Cards.
“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 Voter Cards to millions of registered voters all over the country.
“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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