Breaking: INEC shirts Governorship, House of Assembly elections to March 18
ABUJA—The Independent National Electoral Commission (NAN) has postponed the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections scheduled to hold on March 11 by one week.
The elections will now take place on March 18.
An impeccable source at the INEC said a formal statement is being prepared to announce the postponement.
Shadanpamarepoters reports that the postponement will not be to the inability of the commission to commence the re-configuration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used for the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, to enable their use for the state elections.
Litigation after the Presidential and National Assembly polls must have prevented the commission from doing the needful on time, hence the shift.
However,
The Court of Appeal, Abuja, on Wednesday, turned down the request of the Labour Party’s Presidential candidate, Mr Peter Gregory Obi seeking to stop the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from reconfiguring the BVAS equipment used for the conduct of the February 25 Presidential election.
The Court held that granting the request would jeopardize the electoral body in the conduct of the March 11 governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.
The Court agreed with INEC that information on accreditation contained in the BVAS devices had been uploaded into its back up server and could be accessed at any time.
The Appellate Court predicated its agreement with INEC on the ground that all averments in the counter affidavit of the Electoral body were not challenged.
The Court said that granting the request of Obi and the Labour Party would tie down the hand of INEC in the conduct of the Saturday’s gubernatorial election.
The Court further held that the claims of INEC that information on the BVAS devices cannot be tampered with during uploading was not attacked by Obi and as such, deemed
