Governorship, Assembly Elections Should Be Postponed – Yiaga Africa
The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, has said the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, should postpone the forthcoming governorship and state assembly elections due to Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, reconfiguration.
Mr. Itodo stated this on Wednesday in a Channels Television interview.
He was reacting to INEC’s request in the Court of Appeal to reconfigure the BVAS machine used during the 25 February presidential and National Assembly elections.
Itodo said that it would be in the best interest of all stakeholders to fix another date for the gubernatorial elections.
He explained rescheduling the state’s gubernatorial elections for at least one or two weeks is still within the Electoral Act.
“We are already in a difficult situation, and to prevent further logistical issues during the governorship elections and to the extent that it will undermine the integrity of the process.
“Regardless of the ruling today (Wednesday), I think it is in the best interest to reschedule the election, whatever the court says, stakeholders should adopt the ruling.
“What is happening is the consequence and the cost of broken trust; if everything had gone well in the first round of the election, perhaps the parties would have approached this differently. Two options are available to INEC if you reconfigure the subject of that process to public scrutiny; Move the election by a week or two weeks. INEC also needs time to reconfigure all the BVAS; three days is insufficient for the commission to configure the machine for the governorship election,” he said.
The Court of Appeal fixed Wednesday to hear the application filed by the Labour Party to inspect the BVAS physically.
The state governorship elections are slated to hold on 11 March 2023.
