INEC Set To Postpone Saturday’s Governorship Election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may reschedule Saturday’s governorship and state assembly elections to March 18, 2023.

Naija News reports that the gubernatorial and state assembly elections was earlier scheduled to hold on March 11th.

But a source at the electoral umpire revealed to The Whistler that the election will be postponed due to the INEC’s inability to promptly 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 was earlier 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.

But the Elections Petition Tribunal on Wednesday gave INEC the nod to reconfigure the BVAS.

A three-member panel of Justices in an unanimous decision on Wednesday held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect the forthcoming Governorship and State Assembly elections.

The court dismissed objections raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.

According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC”.

Besides, it noted that INEC had in an affidavit it filed before the court, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost, as they would be stored and easily retrieved from its accredited back-end server.

It further observed that neither Obi nor LP controverted the depositions in INEC’s affidavit, stressing that since such averments were not challenged, it amounted to admission by the Applicants.