Reasons INEC postponed Governorship, assembly elections by a week

The Independent National Electoral Commission has shifted the governorship and state assembly elections scheduled to hold on March 11 to March 18..

It was gathered that the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and his commissioners were in a closed-door meeting over the governorship election. The meeting commenced at 7pm on Wednesday.

The postponement is due to the inability of the commission 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.

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 materials on the premise that it had to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) for the conduction of the polls this Saturday.