Governorship and state assembly elections that were originally scheduled for Saturday have been moved up to March 18 by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
After receiving approval from the Court of Appeal to reconfigure Bimodal Voter Accreditation machines, the commission held a management meeting in Abuja on Wednesday to make the decision.
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the meeting’s National Chairman, presided over the event, which began at 7 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m.
Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, issued a statement on Wednesday night stating that the governorship election could not proceed as planned due to the need for time to reconfigure the BIVAS machines that were used in the presidential election on February 25.
On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal granted INEC permission to modify the BIVAS used in the presidential election.
According to the panel of the appeal court, granting the Labour Party’s objections and Peter Obi, its presidential candidate, would amount to “tying the hands of the respondent, INEC.”
Obi went to the appeal court after Bola Tinubu, the candidate for president-elect of the All Progressives Congress, was declared the winner, and he got an order stopping the commission from changing the BVAS that was used for the election.
In its ruling on Friday, the court issued the order granting Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party permission to inspect the sensitive materials used in the election.
However, the electoral body requested that the court modify its order prohibiting it from altering the BVAS machines, arguing that they needed to be reconfigured for the governorship and state assembly elections.
The panel headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh denied Obi and his party’s objections and ruled that the server’s backup files could not be lost during Wednesday’s proceedings, which were attended by the LP’s leader and a group of party leaders.
Justice Haruna Tsammani said in the main ruling that stopping INEC would have an effect on the governorship election on Saturday.
In addition, he chastised the applicants for repeating their request to be permitted to scan and make copies of the INEC-possessed electoral materials, claiming that this was an abuse of the court process.
Tsammani mentioned that INEC had stated in an affidavit submitted to the court that the BVAS accreditation data could not be altered or lost.
In addition, the judge stated that neither LP nor Obi submitted a counter-affidavit to dispute the contention in INEC’s affidavit.