BREAKING: INEC Postpones Governorship and State Assembly Elections By One Week
By People’s Voice Nigeria | News
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to postpone Saturday’s Governorship and State Assembly elections by one week.
The elections, which were earlier scheduled to hold on March 11, will now hold on March 18, 2023, according to a source at INEC.
The INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and his commissioners held a meeting to discuss the feasibility of holding the governorship and House of Assembly elections this Saturday or whether to postpone the polls by one week.
The move by INEC comes on the heels of Wednesday’s ruling by the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja granting it permission to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
In a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of justices, the court held that preventing the electoral umpire from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect the forthcoming governorship and state assembly elections.
It dismissed objections by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against the request.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party would amount to “tying the hands of the respondent, INEC.”
An emergency meeting of the top management of the commission was called after the judgment.
INEC reported having engaged 176,000 BVAS machines deployed to polling units for the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25.
“It will take time to reconfigure about 176,000 BVAS machines before Saturday.” “The time is too short,” according to INEC.
The meeting, which commenced around 7 p.m., came out with the decision for the election proponents in order to ensure that the adequate data on the BVAS machine is properly backed up from the Presidential and National Assembly elections and now reconfigured for the Governorship and State Assembly.
