INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu

By Nehru Odeh

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has shifted the governorship and state houses of assembly elections initially scheduled to hold on Saturday 11 March to 18 March.

The electoral commission arrived at this decision following a meeting of its executives on the evening of Wednesday 8 March 2023, citing logistics crisis stemming from BVAS configuration and transportation.

The postponement, according to the commission was due to its inability to commence reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines utilized during the February 25 presidential election to enable their use in the state elections.

INEC had earlier been restrained from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies (CTC) issued to candidates who are challenging the outcome of the presidential election.

“The elections were postponed to allow one more week for preparations,” an official familiar with the meeting told Peoples Gazette by telephone on Wednesday night. “We should be able to get everything in order before March 18.”

The meeting was still underway at INEC headquarters in Abuja as of the time of filing this report.

The commission had convinced the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal to vary its order granting Peter Obi of the Labour Party and PDP’s Atiku Abubakar permission to inspect the election itmaterials on the premise that it had to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) for the conduction of the polls this Saturday.