The Forum for Transparency and Integrity in Leadership has urged the Federal High Court in Lagos to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission from conducting elections in Internally Displaced Persons’ camps in Niger Republic, Chad or anywhere else outside the shores of Nigeria.
The group, which sued alongside a lawyer, Samuel Adeniji, also wants the court to restrain INEC from conducting elections in IDP camps within Nigeria without first compiling the list of eligible voters in the camps and capturing them on the voters’ register.
The plaintiffs also want the court to compel INEC to allow them to inspect such voters’ register before elections could be conducted in IDP camps.
In an affidavit deposed to by Adeniji, the plaintiffs said their suit followed a recent announcement by INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, that “people who left their abode due to insurgency in the North-East would not be denied their voting rights.”
The plaintiffs said they were not aware that Nigerians who now reside in IDP camps applied to have their registration transferred from the locations where they were displaced to the IDP camps.
The plaintiffs also maintained that allowing IDPs residing outside the shores of Nigeria to vote would be illegal.
They are seeking “an order of perpetual injunction restraining INEC from conducting any election during the forthcoming general elections in any of the IDP camps without having first complied with the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and the Electoral Act with regard to having the names of IDPs on the national voters register.
The court has yet to fix a date to hear the suit.