The elections for the state house of representatives and governor that were supposed to take place on March 11 have been postponed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Festus Okoye, the INEC National Commissioner for Voter Education, announced the date of the elections in a statement on Wednesday night.
According to him, the Commission convened to determine the impact of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal's decision on the redesign of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used for the February 25 presidential election on its preparations for the governorship contest. The Governorship and State Assembly elections will now take place on Saturday, March 18, 2023, according to the Commission's difficult but necessary decision, he said.
According to Okoye, political parties will continue their campaigns through Thursday, March 16, 2023, at midnight, or 24 hours before the new election date. While the tribunal's decision would allow INEC to start preparing the BVAS for the governorship and state assembly elections, according to Okoye, it is already too late to complete the reconfiguration.
This decision was not made lightly, but it is required to give enough time to back up the information on the more than 176,000 BVAS machines from the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023, and then to reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections. This has always been the procedure, even when the Commission was utilizing smart card readers. But once again, the Commission is not opposed to litigants looking over election materials. As a result, it will keep allowing all litigants access to the documents they need to pursue their cases in court, he continued.
