The PUNCH has learned that the process of resetting up the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines that were used in the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25 will end on Monday.
The Independent National Electoral Commission moved the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections that were supposed to take place on March 11 to March 18 so that the BVAS could be changed.
So, everything that had to do with the elections had to be moved, including the political parties’ inspection of sensitive materials at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The decision was made at INEC’s management meeting on Wednesday. The meeting was called after the Court of Appeal gave INEC permission to change the way the BVAS machines work.
The commission said it couldn’t hold the governorship election as planned because it needed time to change the settings on the BVAS machines, which were used for the February 25 presidential election.
The Court of Appeal turned down a request by the Labour Party to challenge the way the BVAS was changed for the presidential election, which the Labour Party did not agree with.
The panel of the court of appeals said that letting the objections of the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, through would “tie INEC’s hands.”
An official who spoke to our reporter on Sunday on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to talk about the issue said that BVAS reconfiguration was done for some states and would be done for others on Monday.
“Most states have finished the reconfiguration, and the ones that are left will all finish on Monday,” the source told our correspondent.
The source also said that the results of the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections would be posted on INEC’s result-viewing portal. They also said that the problems that kept the presidential election results from being uploaded on time had been fixed.
He said, “The results from the Polling Unit will be sent to the IReV portal. In fact, almost all of the ones for the election on February 25 have been downloaded since we fixed the problem that made it hard to do so.”
The official said that the sensitive materials would be given out again on Wednesday. This was about the distribution of materials before the governorship election.
“We had already sent out all of the non-sensitive materials before we had to move the state elections from March 11 to March 18 by a week. Before the date changed, some states had already started moving the sensitive materials. We had to give them back to the Central Bank of Nigeria so they could be kept safe. We talked to everyone involved, including party officials and the police, about what to do.
“Starting Wednesday, we’ll give them back to the local governments.”
(Punch)
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