The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, Aisha Dukku (APC, Gombe) has said the 60 days extension requested by the House for the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR), is not feasible.
She said the committee met with the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, but the commission did not agree with the request.
Ms Dukku stated this on Wednesday while briefing journalists.
The House had following a motion by Ben Kalu (APC, Abia), resolved that INEC should extend the CVR.
The Commission was urged to deploy an additional 30 voter registration machines in each local government area, train and deploy ad-hoc staff to improve the shortage of manpower at registration centres and provide security for the ad-hoc staff.
While briefing the House on the referral earlier, Ms Dukku claimed that INEC agreed with the resolutions of the House for the extension.
“He (INEC chairman) has already agreed to extend but for the court injunction he is to appear on the 29th of June,” she said.
However, during the briefing, Ms Dukku made a U-turn on her statement, noting that INEC did agree with extension but did not give a specific time frame.
“INEC said they are going to look at our request, however, whatever happens, they cannot be able to open the register for the next 60 days because of the activities lined up.
“The registration of voters is one aspect, there are other things to be done like printing of the cards, distribution of the cards and the pasting of names across all 774 local governments. And so, it will not be possble— this is the statement— for INEC to extend for the days we requested. They will go back and look at their timeline and look at how possible they can be able to increase the days for registration.
“They are already in court. The court has stopped them from closing the registration. In essence, INEC will inform Nigerians as to the level of extension.
“INEC said they are going to look at our request, however, whatever happens, they cannot be able to open the register for the next 60 days because of the activities lined up,” she said.
In the past couple of weeks, there has been a surge in the number of persons registering for PVCs.
With the last-minute rush, there have been reported cases of INEC staff being overwhelmed because of the rush.
Security for INEC staff and voters has also been an issue. In the South-east, unknown gunmen attacked INEC offices and killed a staffer of the Commission.
Credit: Premium Times