>>> The Governorship and State Assembly Elections have been rescheduled by INEC for one week, to allow for the reconfiguration of BVAS machines which were utilized during the presidential election. The decision was supported by a Nigerian court, which dismissed objections from the Labour Party regarding the reconfiguration of the BVAS machines for the State Elections. INEC has guaranteed the safety of BVAS data and has also stated that the postponement will give candidates more time to campaign.

As announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the governorship and state house of assembly elections that were initially planned for March 11, 2023, have been postponed for a week and will now take place on March 18, 2023.

INEC explained that the reason for rescheduling the elections was to begin the reconfiguration process of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used during the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, in order to make them suitable for the state elections. BVAS is a new voting device that verifies voters' names and identities using their fingerprints or facial features and has a camera to capture polling unit-level results and upload them to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal for citizens to view as the election progresses.

The postponement was granted after the Presidential Election Petition Court authorized INEC to reconfigure the BVAS used in the presidential election. The court unanimously dismissed objections raised against the reconfiguration, noting that stopping INEC would affect the upcoming governorship and state assembly elections. INEC assured that the accreditation data in the BVAS would not be tampered with, and that it could be easily stored and retrieved from their accredited back-end server.

Although the ruling was issued too late for INEC to complete the reconfiguration, they assured Nigerians that they would back up the data from the presidential election before starting the process. Candidates for the governorship election can now continue campaigning until March 16, 2023, 24 hours before the rescheduled election date.