Despite court leave, INEC postpones governorship, state legislature polls to March 18

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed the governorship, state Houses of Assembly elections initially scheduled for next Saturday, March 11 to March 18.

The March 11 poll date was also to accommodate the rescheduled senatorial elections in 8 zones carried over from the February 25 exercise.

The sudden postponement is believed to be the resolution of an emergency meeting at the commission’s headquarters between the INEC National Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and his commissioners.

The meeting commenced around 7 pm and was still ongoing as of the time of filing this report.

According to sources, the meeting was convened after it became obvious that the commission could not proceed with the planned reconfiguration of its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines despite a leave granted by the Court of Appeal in Abuja, Wednesday afternoon.

The appellant court had in its ruling, Wednesday, granted INEC the leave to reconfigure its BVAS machines to prepare them for the March 11 governorship and state legislature polls.

In its ruling delivered by a three-person panel headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, the court declined the application by presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi seeking to stop INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS devices being part of the sensitive materials he had already secured access to inspecting as granted by an earlier ruling by the Appeal Court.

The court refused to vary its previous order in favour of INEC so previous order stands, while also allowing INEC to re-configure its BVAS devices ‘provided all data is save on a secured backend.’

However, INEC despite the court order in its favour, has shifted the planned March 11 polls to March 18 after a closed-door meeting of its commissioners held in Abuja, Wednesday night.

While INEC is yet to release an official statement as at time at press time, sources at the commission say the postponement may not be unconnected with the inability of the commission to commence full reconfiguration of the BVAS machines in time before the March 11 polls.

The short time may not also guarantee full reconfiguration of the entire BVAS machines to be deployed for the planned March 11 polls.

The BVAS machines were deployed for the disputed February 25 elections, which is still under litigation as the court had granted the candidates of the LP, Obi, as well as, that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and only Wednesday, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the leave to inspect sensitive materials of INEC deployed for the presidential poll.

INEC was earlier restrained from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies (CTC) were issued to candidates challenging the outcome of the presidential election.

However, the commission in an application before the appellant court sought the leave to reconfigure the thousands of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used for the February 25 polls to be redeployed for the March 11 Governorship and state Assembly polls nationwide.

The implication of the appellant court ruling would either mean a postponement of the nationwide governorship, State Assembly, the 8 rescheduled senatorial zones elections all fixed for March 11, if the court grants the application of the Labour Party.

It could also mean that the alleged destruction of evidence which Labour Party claims are stored in the BVAS devices deployed in the February 25 Presidential ad National Assembly polls, if the court grants the application of INEC to reconfigure the BVA devices.

However, while the Labour Party’s lawyers questioned the motives of INEC to be so hasty to compromise the principal evidence of the election umpire’s fraudulent manipulation of the election results, INEC insisted in its appeal that it needed to reconfigure the 176,846 BVAS devices to be ready for the March 11 governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.