Nnamdi Felix / Abuja

One of Nigeria’s registered political parties, Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, on Monday in Abuja urged a federal high court siting in Abuja to stop the Independent National Election Commission, INEC, from going ahead with its proposed creation of additional 30,000 polling units ahead of the forthcoming 2015 general elections.

In an exparte motion moved by the party’s lawyer, Mrs. Nella Andem-Rabana, a senior advocate of Nigeria, the party asked the court for an interim injunction restraining INEC from further creating, delineating and allocating any additional polling units to any part of the country pending the final determination of the motion on
notice.

The party argued that it was speculative and premature for the electoral body to purportedly create additional polling units across the country based on projected registered voters when the field data collection from the Permanent Voters Card, PVC, distribution and Continuous Voters Registration, CVR, were yet to be concluded.

UPN views the attempt by the electoral body to create the additional polling units as illegal and wants the court to make an order declaring that the purported exercise as ultra vires, unconstitutional, malafide, null, void and of no effect whatsoever.

It further claimed that by the combined effect of the provisions of section 9 and section 42 of the Electoral Act 2010, that INEC did not have absolute powers to create polling units for the purpose of any election in Nigeria without recourse to demographics, geopolitical population and circumstances of registered voters.

UPN maintained that the electoral body was under a legal duty to rely on geographical population, statistics and number of registered voters within the wards in compliance with provisions of the laws, in the creation and allocation of polling units in Nigeria.

The trial judge, Justice Abdu Kafarati, thereafter fixed ruling on the party’s exparte motion seeking for interim injunctions against INEC for October 22nd.