INEC Postpones Governorship, State Assembly Elections
There are strong indications that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may postpone the Governorship and States Houses of Assembly elections scheduled to hold on Saturday, 11 March.
Multiple sources hinted on Wednesday night that the elections may be shifted by one week to 18 March.
The postponement, which is yet to be confirmed, may be due to the commission’s inability to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines ahead of Saturday’s election due to a court order.
As at the time of this report, the commission was still meeting at its headquarters in Abuja.
It should be noted that the Court of Appeal had granted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and their respective candidates, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi’s request to inspect all sensitive materials used in the conduct of the recent presidential election.
Both the PDP and LP have rejected the election which INEC declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu, as the winner, and called for the conduct of another round of elections.
In preparation of a suit to challenge the outcome, they approached the court seeking permission to inspect all sensitive materials.
The court also restrained INEC from tampering with them.
While INEC approached the Court on Monday to seek permission to reconfigure the BVAS, the request was only granted on Wednesday, two days to the election.
It should be noted that the presidential election left Nigerians dissatisfied with logistical and technical challenges denting the smooth conduct of the elections in many parts of the country.
The major glitch was the failure of the commission to upload all polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) Portal. Preliminary reports of several observer groups have also noted that the commission performed below expectation, in an election many hoped would be a game-changer in the country’s electoral history.
Efforts to obtain clarification from INEC’s National Commissioner for Voter Education, Festus Okoye, on the possible postponement were unsuccessful as he did not respond to calls or text message request.
