The Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday night said it would appeal the court judgment, which ordered that two Nigerians with Temporary Voters Cards should be allowed to vote during the March 18, 2023 governorship and Houses of Assembly elections.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson for INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, made this known to The PUNCH on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n He said, \u201cThe Independent National Electoral Commission has been served a copy of the judgement delivered today by the Federal High Court, Abuja Division, which ordered it to allow two plantiffs to vote with their Temporary Voter Cards. The commission is taking immediate steps to appeal against the judgement of the trial court.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The PUNCH reports that the\u00a0 Federal High Court in Abuja, on Thursday,\u00a0 ordered INEC\u00a0 to allow the use of Temporary Voter Cards in the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections rescheduled ror March 18.<\/span><\/p>\n Justice Obiora Egwuatu made the order while delivering judgment on\u00a0 a suit filed by two aggrieved Nigerians, Kofoworola Olusegun and Wilson Allwell, who prayed that they should be allowed to vote with their TVCs, as INEC failed to issue them with their Permanent Voter Cards before it closed the process.<\/span><\/p>\n Justice Egwuatu said the order was made on the grounds that the plaintiffs were duly registered and captured in INEC database.<\/span><\/p>\n The court held that there was no portion of both the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act, that states that it is only Permanent Voter Cards that could be used to vote.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cAn order is made compelling the defendant\u00a0 to allow the plaintiffs to vote using their Temporary Voter Cards issued by the defendant, the plaintiffs having been duly captured in the National Register of Voter\u2019s database.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA declaration is made by this court that the plaintiffs, having fulfilled all necessary legal requirements to register and having consequently been captured in the defendant\u2019s\u00a0 central database and manual, printed paper-based record or hard copy format of the defendant\u2019s maintained Register of Voters, the plaintiffs\u00a0 are entitled to vote using their Temporary Voter Cards in the\u00a0 forthcoming 2023 general elections,\u201d the judge said.<\/span><\/p>\n The judge however, said\u00a0 he was unable to grant the third prayer by the plaintiffs, which was to allow the order to extend to every eligible voter, who was unable to change their TVC to PVC.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis suit having not been brought in a representative capacity, I find myself unable to grant any relief pursuant to prayer three of the plaintiffs application,\u201d the judge said.<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking to newsmen,\u00a0 counsel for the plaintiffs, Mr Victor Opatola, said\u00a0 the judgment was a win for all Nigerians who suffered to get registered to vote, were duly registered but, due to no fault of theirs, could not get their PVCs before the election.<\/span><\/p>\n Opatola said, \u201cSince my clients had fulfilled all necessary requirements by law but were not issued their PVCs until the time for collection of PVCs was over, they should not be allowed to suffer.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo, what the court is saying is that these two people who have fulfilled all necessary requirements can vote with their TVCs. By law of equity, it should also apply to all Nigerians who have fulfilled all necessary requirements and were issued TVCs by INEC.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He maintained that this should be so because the content of the TVC was the same as the content of the\u00a0 PVC and the only difference was the plastic used for the PVC.<\/span><\/p>\n The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the judgment, having been delivered, is biding on INEC and is enforceable barring any appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n NAN\u00a0 also reports that INEC had repeatedly held that only eligible voters with the PVCs would be allowed to vote in the 2023 presidential, governorship and parliamentary elections.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the plaintiffs,\u00a0 in the suit filed marked FHC\/ABJ\/CS\/180\/2023, challenged the position of INEC and\u00a0 asked the court to determine \u201cwhether a person whose name appears in the electronic format in INEC\u2019s central database and manual, printed paper-based record or hard copy format of the register of voters and has been assigned a Voter\u2019s Identification Number,\u00a0 can, as a consequence of the defendant\u2019s inabilities, actions and omission, be disenfranchised of the right and entitlement to vote in the 2023 general elections.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday night said it would appeal the court judgment, which ordered that two Nigerians<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}