Kano State government has said it would drag the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to court if it refused to extend the voter registration exercise.
It also said that INEC had demonstrated incapacitation to manage next year’s general election by the shoddy way it is handling the permanent voters’ cards distribution and registration of new eligible voters.
Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, deputy governor, said that in view of the alleged inadequacies that greeted the exercise, the state government is demanding for extension of the voters’ registration by seven (7) days, if not, it might be heading to court to seek redress.
Ganduje said while the state government will continue to give necessary support to INEC in carrying out the exercise, it is out to ensure justice is accorded the people as regard the exercise.
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The deputy governor, who made this disclosure, while speaking with journalists at his office in Kano, weekend, described the performance of the INEC in handling the task as “lacking coordination.”
“This is to register the continued support and co-operation of the Executive Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso to all the programmes and activities of INEC in Kano.
“The current activities include the on-going issuance of permanent voters cards (PVCs), the registration of new voters that were omitted during the 2010 exercise and those that attain the age of 18 years and above.
“The first segment of the exercise (i.e issuance of permanent voters card (PVC) which took place between 7 to11th November, 2014) was marked by some shortcomings.
“The PVC distributed to Kano State voters were merely 3 million in number as against the 4.7 million cards; that is, the so called reconciled figure. It could be recalled that Kano State has the highest number of 5,454,528 registered voters based on 2010 INEC registration exercise” he stated.
Ganduje explained that even the number of those registered, did not represent the actual number of eligible persons that could have been registered in the state, due to political apathy by some segment of the population.
“From records available, there were close to 1, 872,’ Zero Polling Unit’ out of the total number of 8,072 polling units in the state. In addition to these shortcomings, the issuance of permanent voters’ card in Kano State started without pasting the registered voters list at the polling units.”
“This incidence did not allow voters to identify their names as provided by law. This situation caused confusion, apprehension and doubts and eventually disrupted the exercise in certain polling centres,” he added.
Adeola Ajakaiye
