The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that the governorship and assembly elections would be held on March 18.
The first election date was set for March 11 throughout 24 states.
Wednesday, the court of appeal denied Peter Obi’s request to prevent INEC from redesigning the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) prior to the governorship and state assembly elections. Obi is the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP).
INEC, in a statement signed by Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner and chairman, information and voter education committee, said that while the tribunal’s ruling allows the commission to begin preparing the BVAS for the governorship and state assembly elections, “it has come far too late to complete the reconfiguration.”
“Thus, the commission has made the unfortunate but necessary decision to reschedule the Governorship and State Assembly elections, which will now occur on Saturday, March 18, 2023. With this decision, campaigns will continue until midnight on Thursday, March 16, 2023, which is 24 hours prior to the new election date,” according to the announcement.
“This decision was not made lightly, but it is necessary to ensure there is sufficient time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines used in the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023, and then reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections.
“This has been the norm for all elections, even the time when the Commission utilized the Smart voting system.” We like to emphasise, however, that the Commission is not opposed to litigants scrutinizing electoral materials. Therefore, it will continue to provide all litigants with access to the necessary materials to pursue their cases in court.
“We wish to reassure all political parties and candidates that data from the Presidential and National Assembly elections would be backed up and accessible on INEC cloud services, such as the INEC Results Viewing Portal” (IReV).
“Political parties may request Certified True Copies of the BVAS’s backend data. In addition, interested parties will continue to have access to the BVAS results via the IReV.
“We thank Nigerians and friends of Nigeria for their patience as we continue to address these hard issues and traverse these difficult times.”
Obi requested a court order prohibiting the INEC from tampering with the information encoded in the BVAS machines until a proper inspection is done and certified true copies (CTC) are given.
Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP obtained court permission on Friday to have access to all sensitive materials used by INEC to conduct the February 25 election.
But, INEC filed a motion to modify the court’s orders.
INEC’s legal counsel, Tanimu Inuwa, stated that each polling location has its own BVAS machine that must be configured for the next elections.
INEC would have a difficult time reconfiguring the 176,000 BVAS for the poll, according to him.
Inuwa further noted that no BVAS data will be lost, as all BVAS data will be transmitted to the backend server of the commission.
“Accordingly, accepting this application will impede the process and impede the conduct of the elections,” he had previously stated.
The court, which acts as a tribunal for presidential election cases, ruled that allowing Obi and LP’s plea would amount to constraining INEC’s hands and consequently declined to prevent the commission from reconfiguring the BVAS.