Justice Obiora Egwuatu of a Federal High Court, Abuja, yesterday ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) to allow eligible voters with the Temporary Voter Cards (TVC) participate in the March 18 governorship and state houses of assembly elections.
However, INEC vowed to appeal against court order. The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmim, said the commission was taking necessary steps to vacate the order. Oyekanmi confirmed that INEC had been served with the court order.
Oyekanmi added: “INEC has been served a copy of the judgement delivered today by the Federal High Court, Abuja Division which ordered it to allow two Plaintiffs to vote with their Temporary Voter’s Card (TVC). The Commission is taking immediate steps to appeal against the judgement of the trial court.”
This was just as the Commission yesterday, said the insinuations that the redeployment of its former Director of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Chidi Nwafor, was partly responsible for the technical glitches experienced during the presidential and National Assembly polls held on February 25, was nothing but an attempt to mislead the public.
On same day, the Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC) expressed support for the rescheduling of the governorship and state assembly elections from Saturday, March 11 to March 18, 2023 by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The electoral body had on Thursday, announced the postponement of the governorship and states’ Houses of Assembly elections to March 18.
INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman, Voter Education and Publicity, Festus Okoye, in a statement, had said the decision to postpone the polls was made to ensure adequate time to back up data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the presidential and National Assembly elections and, then, reconfigure the machines for the governorship and House of Assembly elections.
