INEC announces postponement of election to March 18th 

….says it did not get enough time to reconfigure BVAS before March 11th

The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) has announced that the governorship and state assembly elections will be postponed to March 18th. 

The postponement is due to its inability to commence the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System(BVAS), machines on time, so the election was shifted from the originally slated date, March 11th. 

The Court of Appeal on Wednesday, March 8th, gave the commission the nod to reconfigure the BVAS used for the February 25th Presidential and National Assembly polls in readiness for the state elections.

Confirming the postponement, the Head of Voter Education, Publicity, Gender and Civil Society Organisation of INEC in Ondo State, Funke Segun-Osifeso said: “This is to inform you that the House of Assembly election has been officially postponed till Saturday 18/02/2023.

“Therefore, the distribution exercise slated for tomorrow has been cancelled. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Information was gathered that the INEC hierarchy was still meeting over the matter last night and was yet to clear the issue at press time.

An anonymous source working  in INEC said the reason for postponement might be due to insecurity. 

It was gathered that following the violence that characterized the February 25th presidential and National Assembly elections, some Adhoc staff are afraid of coming out to conduct the March 11th elections.

The source said: “Some of the Adhoc staff are afraid to come out to conduct the elections because of what happened during the Presidential election.”

Both the INEC National Commissioner in charge of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye and the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi are yet to make any comments on the alleged postponement of the election.