PVCs: Court asked to postpone general elections

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.

Source: PUNCHng