By Ade Martins-
Nigeria’s electoral commission has postponed Saturday’s gubernatorial elections to vote in new governors, saying it needed more time to reconfigure electronic machines that are at the centre of last month’s disputed presidential vote.
The elections to select governors in 28 of the country’s 36 states will now be held on March 18.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday night said it needed more time to reconfigure its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) that uses fingerprints and facial recognition to identify voters and transmit results from polling station.
INEC has been criticised for lack of transparency during the presidential elections of February 25th, and its failure to upload the election results two weeks since it was announced. Its portal has been shut down since the elections, raising issues of its credibility, despite its pubic declaration to be impartial and transparent.
INEC’s top boss, Mahmood Yakubu, has also not been as accessible to journalists as expected.
Opposition challenger Peter Obi of the Labour Party argued that a reconfiguration will destroy the evidence for his case, after the presidential election was awarded to the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party, Bola Tinubu
The first hearing of the Labour party’s case is due to occur tomorrow.
The same BVAS machies were used during las month’s presidential and parliamentary vote.
“This decision has not been taken lightly but it is necessary to ensure that there is adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on 25th February 2023 and then to reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections,” INEC said in a statement.
Observers from the European Union, the Commonwealth and other bodies reported multiple problems during last month’s election, among them failures in systems designed to prevent vote manipulation, and criticised the INEC for poor planning and voting delays.
The two main opposition parties claim the glitches in the system allowed votes to be tampered with, insisting that the electoral body did not follow its own rules and the country’s own election laws in announcing a winner. Runner-up Atiku Abubakar is calling for the cancellation of the presidential election while the candidate who finished third, Peter Obi, has said he has proof he won the contest.
The electoral body said it is not against the opposition raising legal challenges to the presidential election result. According to Okoye, its spokesman, officials “will continue to grant all litigants access to the materials they require to pursue their cases in court.”