The deadline for continuing voter registration has been extended by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to July 31.
Festus Okoye, National Commissioner for INEC and Chairman of the Committee on Information and Voter Education, made this announcement in a statement on Friday in Abuja.
Prior to the Federal High Court of Abuja getting involved and ordering INEC to prolong the exercise, the commission had originally set June 30 as the deadline for voter registration.
Okoye said that the extension came after the same court’s decision on Wednesday to dismiss the related lawsuit brought by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP).
He added that the court held that INEC was at liberty to fix a date for the conclusion of the CVR, provided it was not later than 90 days before the general elections as provided in Section 9(6) of the Electoral Act.
The statement read: “In compliance with the interim injunction of the court pending the determination of the substantive suit, and in order to enable more Nigerians to register, the Commission continued with the CVR beyond 30th June 2022. For this reason, the CVR has already been extended beyond 30th June 2022 for a period of 15 days. With the judgement of the Federal High Court, all legal encumbrances have now been removed.
“Accordingly, the Commission has taken the following decisions: 1. The CVR is hereby extended for another two weeks until Sunday 31st July 2022, thereby bringing the total duration of the extension to 31 days (1st – 31st July 2022).
