By NewsBits
Like it did promise but failed the last time out, the ongoing reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used during the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25 ended on Monday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised that the governorship and state Houses of Assembly election results would be transmitted on INEC’s result-viewing portal
Recall that INEC had postponed the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections scheduled to hold on 11 March to 18 March in order to be able to reconfigure the BVAS. Consequently, all activities pertaining to the polls were rescheduled, including the inspection of sensitive materials at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by the political parties. INEC took the decision at its management meeting, which was convened on Wednesday after the Court of Appeal gave it the go-ahead to reconfigure the BVAS machines.
The commission said it could not go ahead with the governorship poll as earlier scheduled because it needed time to reconfigure the BVAS machines, which were used for the presidential election on February 25. The Court of Appeal had dismissed an application by Labour Party challenging the reconfiguration of the BVAS used for the presidential poll, whose outcome Labour Party had rejected.
The appellate court panel held that allowing the objections of the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, would amount to “tying the hands of the respondent (INEC).” An official who spoke on condition of anonymity explained that BVAS reconfiguration had been completed for some states while others would be concluded on Monday
“Most states have finished the reconfiguration and the remaining ones will all finish on Monday,” A source said. The source also gave the assurance that the governorship and state Houses of Assembly election results would be transmitted on INEC’s result-viewing portal, noting that the glitches that delayed the uploading of presidential poll results had been rectified.
He said “The polling unit results will be transmitted on the IReV portal. Indeed, the ones for the 25 February election have almost all been downloaded after we fixed the hitch that had made it difficult to do so”. On materials distribution ahead of the governorship poll, the official said the sensitive materials would be re-distributed on Wednesday.
“We had completed the distribution of non-sensitive materials before we had to shift the 11 March date for the state elections by a week. Some states had started moving the sensitive materials before the change of date. We have had to return them to the Central Bank of Nigeria for safekeeping in consultation with all stakeholders, including party officials and the police. We will move them back to the local governments beginning from Wednesday”.
