Nigeria Postpones Election of State Governors

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed elections for state governors and local assemblies by one week, citing logistics challenges.

The polls had been scheduled to take place on Saturday, March 11, 2023. They will now be held on March 18.

INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Voter Education and Publicity, Festus Okoye in a statement said this decision had not been taken lightly, but it was necessary to ensure that there was adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023 and then to reconfigure them for the governor and state assembly elections.

INEC introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the first time as part of new technologies used in this year's elections in a bid to improve transparency. But observer groups and opposition parties said huge delays in voting and failures in the system when uploading tallies allowed for ballot disparities during the presidential election.

InFocus

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is responsible for organising and conducting voting in Nigeria.

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