The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed Governorship and State Assembly Elections by one week to reconfigure BVAS machines used for the presidential election. A Nigerian court ruled in favor of INEC's decision to reconfigure the BVAS for the State Elections, dismissing objections by the Labour Party. INEC assured Nigerians that BVAS data will remain secure, and candidates get more time to campaign due to the delay.
The governorship and state house of assembly elections originally scheduled for March 11, 2023, have been postponed by one week to March 18, 2023, as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced.
INEC stated that the reason for the postponement was to commence the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used for the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, in order to enable their use for the state elections.
The BVAS is a new voting device used to cross-check voters’ names on the Register of Voters and authenticate voters using their fingerprints or facial features, and it has a camera to take pictures of polling unit level results and upload them to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal, so that citizens can view the results as the election progresses for each polling unit.
This postponement comes after the Presidential Election Petition Court gave INEC the go-ahead to reconfigure the BVAS used for the presidential election. The court ruled unanimously, by a three-member panel of justices, that if they stopped INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS, it would affect the upcoming governorship and state assembly elections. The court dismissed objections raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS and noted that INEC had assured that the accreditation data in the BVAS would not be tampered with, and that it could be stored and retrieved easily from their accredited back-end server.
Although the ruling came too late for INEC to conclude the reconfiguration, they reassured Nigerians that they would back up the data from the presidential election before beginning the reconfiguration process.
With this latest postponement, candidates for the governorship election could continue their campaigns until Thursday, March 16, 2023, which is 24 hours before the new date of the election.
INEC stated that the Wednesday ruling came “far too late for them to conclude the reconfiguration,” but they reassured Nigerians that they would back up the data from the presidential election before beginning the reconfiguration process. The commission added that with this latest postponement, candidates for the governorship election could continue their campaigns until Thursday, March 16, 2023, which is 24 hours before the new date of the election.