Nigeria‘s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has postponed the Govenrorship and State House of Assembly elections that were previously scheduled to hold on March 11, till March 18, Premier World News has learnt.
INEC, during its executives meeting on Wednesday evening in Abuja, led by the Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu cited logistics crisis, stemming from Bi-Modal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS configuration and transportation.
A source from the meeting disclosed that, the election could no longer proceed as scheduled, in order to allow one more week for preparations. “We should be able to put everything in order before March 18, the source said.
The electoral commission, despite having four years and a massive N355 billion budget to prepare, has a notorious history of postponing elections at the last minute due to concerns with preparedness.
Premier World News also reports that, the commission, earlier today, had convinced the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal to vary its order granting Peter Obi of the Labour Party and PDP’s Atiku Abubakar permission to inspect the presidential election materials on the premise that it had to reconfigure the BVAS for the conduction of the polls this Saturday.
In 2019, the commission under Mahmood Yakubu announced the postponement of the elections around 2:30am the same Saturday the elections were scheduled to hold.
Nigerians had hoped Mr Yakubu would have learnt from his 2019 experience and be better prepared to handle the 2023 elections, supported by an even bigger budget and cutting-edge BVAS technology.
A similar incident occured in February 2015 when the then-INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, shifted the presidential and governorship elections by one month.
This was after Mr Jega had postponed the presidential polls more than once in 2011, when he led the electoral commission.
