The Independent National Electoral Commission (NEC) has shifted the governorship and state assembly elections billed to hold on March 11 by one week to March 18.
Following a meeting of its executives on this Wednesday evening, INEC cited a logistics crisis over the configuration and transportation of BVAS machines, as the main reason for shifting the election.
The INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, and his commissioners were in a closed-door meeting over the governorship 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 as the it had to reconfigure the BVAS ahead for the polls this Saturday.
The elections will now hold on March 18, 2023.
The meeting commenced at 7pm on Wednesday.
INEC had always emphasised that it needed no less than five days to reconfigure the over 176,000 BVAS machines needed for the next round of elections nationwide.
INEC’s move comes on the heels of Wednesday’s ruling by the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja granting it permission to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
The court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of justices, said that preventing INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS would impinge on the forthcoming governorship and State Assembly elections.
It dismissed objections by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against the request.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC”.
An emergency meeting of top management of the commission was called after the judgement.
