INEC: No Registered Voter Should Be Stopped From Voting For Not Having PVC – Lawyer

The Independent National Electoral Commission has been asked to come clean on whether the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines could read the Voter’s Identification Number on Temporary Voters Card, TVCs.

Michael Okejimi of Messrs. Micheal Okejimi and Co. Law Empire made the call following a judgment of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja which held that “A declaration is made by this court that the (2) plaintiffs, having fulfilled all necessary legal requirements to register and having consequently been captured in the defendant’s (INEC’s) central database and manual, printed paper-based record or hard copy format of the defendant’s maintained Register of Voters, the plaintiffs are entitled to vote using their Temporary Voter Cards in the forthcoming 2023 General Election.”

After the FHC judgment on Friday, INEC said it would appeal the verdict of the Federal High Court, Abuja, which held that Kofoworola Olusegun and Wilson A. should vote in the 2023 governorship and state assembly elections with their Temporary Voters Cards.

Prior to the 2023 General Elections, the position of INEC has always been “No PVC, no voting.”

According to Okejimi, the matter is now subject to the decision of the Court of Appeal or superior courts, adding that if the FHC verdict is not stayed or vacated, the plaintiffs will use their TVCs at the forthcoming polls as ordered by the FHC court.

“Well, simply put, the implication of the judgment for the coming election is that, except there’s an appeal and motion for injunction pending appeal filed against the judgment of the trial Court, INEC must obey the judgment by allowing the two voters vote with their TVCs, their details having been captured in the INEC database such that they can easily be verified with BVAS on the election day alongside other voters with PVCs.

“Indeed, there’s no provision in both the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and the Electoral Act, 2022 that states that it is only the PVCs that could be used to vote in an election. Rather, Section 47 of the Electoral Act 2022 provides for voter’s cards,” the lawyer told THE WHISTLER.

Okejimi noted that there was no point stopping voters from voting with their TVC provided that the BVAS can capture the information on TVC as uploaded on INEC’s database.

“In my opinion, once a person has been registered to vote and his details captured in INEC database and have been assigned Voter’s Identification Number (VIN) to that effect and further issued Temporary Voter’s Card (TVC), he should under no circumstance be disenfranchised to vote simply because the Commission has not made his Permanent Voter’s Card available.

“The poser here is, would the BVAS be able to capture and accredit such “registered voter” with his TVC on the election day alongside other voters with PVCs? If the answer is yes, then he should be allowed to vote. In this circumstance, it does not matter that he has no PVC; he’s a registered voter. If such voter with TVC would not be allowed to vote because his PVC has not been made available to him by the Commission, what then is the essence of issuing him with the TVC in the first place?” he asked