The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved N2.6 billion for the printing of 40 million permanent voter cards for distribution to registered voters in the country.

Section 16 of the 2010 Election Act as amended, mandated the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to print and issue permanent voter cards to all registered voters in the country.

INEC had issued Temporary Voter Cards (TVCs) to no fewer than 73.5 million voters registered in the 2011 Nationwide Voters’ Registration.

Addressing State House correspondents after the weekly FEC meeting, chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan, the Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, said the approval was for the first phase of the exercise.

Maku said that INEC would be expected to print additional cards next year to meet the requirement of registered voters in the country.

He said the issuance of the permanent voter cards was in line with the 2010 Electoral Act, and that they would replace the nearly 73.5 million Temporary Voter Cards issued by the commission for the 2011 general elections.

“Next year, INEC is expected again to bring to Council additional proposal to print more voter cards for the registered voters across the country.

“This was approved by the Federal Executive Council in view of the commitment of this administration to the deeper reforms in the electoral process.

“The electoral process is one of the key programmes of this administration and from the reforms that the President brought on board, we saw from the last election, that our elections are getting cleaner by the day and indeed when we look at the outcome of the last election, post-election cases in courts were down by more than 2/3, and that was a record in this country.”

According to the minister, the new cards which contain security features such as hologram, microtext, guilloche, barcode, fingerprints, contactless/embedded chip with printed voter’s details and photograph, will last for at least 10 years.

“This and other features are expected to prevent multiple voting no matter the location of the voter in the country since the cards will be electronically enabled.”

Maku maintained that the project was part of government’s commitment to organising transparent and credible elections in the country.

The contract to print the new cards was awarded to ACT Technologies Limited, which is expected to deliver them within seven months.

President Jonathan, according to the minister, also directed federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to step up action to begin the procurement of items locally in line with his earlier instruction.

“The president, therefore, orders the MDAs to list items in their respective budgetary provisions which they could procure within the country and make such available in subsequent presentations to FEC.”

Maku stressed that President Jonathan’s action was aimed at encouraging local manufacturers and foreign investors to start manufacturing locally, so as to boost the nation’s economy.

Also addressing the Correspondents on the outcome of the FEC meeting, the Minister of State for Finance, Alhaji Yerima Ngama, said he made a presentation to the Council on the outcome of the last 37th meeting of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Sudan, where Nigeria was rated as the third fastest growing economy in the world with a GDP of 7.68 per cent.

“Today in Council, I presented a report on the presentation made at the 37th Annual General Meeting of the Islamic Development Bank.

“The bank has 56 member-countries and at the annual general meeting, each country is supposed to present a report on the economic performance of the country.