Ahead of the February 25, 2023 presidential and national assembly election, the House of Representatives has urged the National Universities Commission, NUC, to suspend academic activities in universities nationwide to enable students of voting age to fully participate.
The lawmakers made the call on Thursday, at plenary after adopting a motion raised by Hon. Kabir Ibrahim, who had noted that students constituted 40 per cent of the newly registered votes in the states outside the location of their universities.
The lawmaker further argued that it was the constitutional rights of students to vote during elections and therefore should be allowed to vote.
He also expressed worry that the students may not be able to collect their voter’s cards as most of their academic calendars were on-going.
Also, at plenary, the lawmakers stepped down a motion on the urgent need to halt the incidence of stringent penalties placed by the West African Examination Council, WAEC, on some secondary schools in Ebonyi state.
The sponsor, Hon. Chinedu Ogah, moving the motion stated that WAEC slammed the schools with penalties of up to N500,000 due to some perceived malpractice during examinations.
According to him, the inability of some of the schools to meet up with the penalties made their students not to be able to write the exams and turned to hawking or other criminal vices.
He said that the development had prevented many students of these schools from writing exams and eventually turned hawkers.
Ogah called on WAEC to immediately halt the penalties, adding that the council should be investigated to know if those penalties are remitted to the Federal government coffers.
In his contribution, Hon. Nkem Abonta said that the schools should be penalized if truly their erred, adding that the House cannot be seen to be taking sides with the schools.
However, the motion was stepped down after the Deputy Speaker of the House, Hon. Idris Wase, frowned at it, saying the house will not condone malpractices done by some of these schools who connive with officials to cheat, urging Ogah to step it down.
