Report from the Office of the SSA to the President on NASS Matters.
The Senate has at plenary urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to undertake the permanent voters card distribution on a continuing and permanent basis in the respective polling units until all the cards are distributed.
The Senate noted that the Independent National Electoral Commission did on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of May, 2014 conduct the distribution of permanent voters cards in some States of the federation.
It was also aware that the process has been faced by several problems among which include the corruption of the central processing system by virus which has resulted in the exclusion of the names of some of the voters from the published voters list and the non-production of the permanent voters cards for them.
The Distinguished Senators observed that the time given for the distribution of the permanent voters cards was too short and the publicity by INEC for the distribution was not sufficient.
The Senators further observed in a motion sponsored by Senator Ita Enang and co-sponsored by all the Senators that in States like Akwa Ibom and Benue, about 200,000 and 600,000 registered voters respectively did not find their names on the register and could not receive their permanent voters cards.
The Senators also observed that in Enugu State the voters threatened to drag INEC to court over the disappearance of 621 polling units in the State out of 2,945 polling units.
They were also aware that if the voters are not issued with their permanent voters cards, they would not be allowed to vote and it would amount to a disenfranchisement of the voters and therefore, mandated its Committee on INEC to monitor the exercise of permanent voters cards distribution and the continuous voters registration exercise and report progress and challenges periodically to the Senate.
The Senate has also considered the request of the President and Commander in Chief for the confirmations of Mr. Ken Kayama and Dr. Casmir Anyanwu for appointments as members of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission and Alhaji Mohammed Aliyu Gumel as a member of the National Population Commission. The requests were referred to the Committee on National Planning and Committee on Identity Cards and National Population respectively.
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