Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to postpone Saturday’s Governorship and State Assembly elections by one week.

The elections which were earlier scheduled to hold on March 11 will now hold on March 18, 2023, according to a source in INEC.
The move by INEC 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, held that preventing the electoral umpire from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect 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 to ensure that there is adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 170,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections h

eld on 25th February 2023 and then to reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections. “It will take time to reconfigure about 170,000 BVAS machines before Saturday. The time is too short,” the source said.  The meeting which commenced around 7 pm was still ongoing as of the time of filing this report.