INEC Speaks on the Postponement of Saturday’s Governorship and State Assembly Elections - INEC postpone 2023 election

The gubernatorial and state houses of assembly elections have been postponed by one week by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The elections, which were originally scheduled for Saturday 11 March, will now take place on Saturday 18 March, according to a statement issued by the commission's spokesperson, Festus Okoye.

According to the statement, the postponement was made to allow for adequate timing to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the governorship and state assembly elections.

Following the request of the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, who both rejected the outcome of the presidential election, the Presidential Election Tribunal barred the commission from tampering with all sensitive materials used in the conduct of the presidential election, including the BVAS.

In preparation for a petition to dispute the decision, they approached the court, asking for permission to review all critical materials and prevent INEC from tampering with them.

Even at that, INEC still contacted the court on Monday to seek permission to reconfigure the BVAS, the request was only granted on Wednesday, two days before the initial date of the gubernatorial election.

"Although the Tribunal's decision allows the Commission to begin preparing the BVAS for the Governorship and State Assembly elections, it has arrived much too late for the reconfiguration to be completed," Mr Okoye said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Consequently, the Commission has taken the painful but necessary decision to postpone the Governorship and State Assembly elections which will now take place on Saturday 18th March 2023. Campaigns will be allowed to continue until midnight on Thursday, March 16, 2023, or 24 hours before the new election date."

INEC stated that the move was made to provide enough time to save the data held on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections and then reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections.

The commission, on the other hand, emphasized that it is not against lawyers inspecting election papers, offering to provide them all the access they need to prosecute their arguments in court.

"We want to reassure all political parties and candidates that the data from the Presidential and National Assembly elections will be backed up and available in INEC cloud facilities, including the INEC Results Viewing Portal." Political parties may request Certified True Copies of the BVAS's backend data. In addition, the BVAS results will remain accessible to interested parties via the IReV."