BREAKING: INEC chairman, commissioners meet, may postpone gov election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is considering postponing the governorship and state assembly elections.

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and his commissioners are currently in a meeting. They are expected to take a decision on a new date.

This may not be unconnected with the governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections scheduled to take place on 11 March.

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It was learnt that the meeting commenced around 7 pm and was still ongoing as of the time of filing this report.

Since the conclusion of the presidential and national assembly polls, the electoral body has been in court over the application seeking to extract data embedded in the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) and inspect other election materials.

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Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), and Atiku Abubakar, standard bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had filed similar applications on the matter before the court of appeal.

They equally applied to obtain the certified true copy (CTC) of all the data in the BVAS.

However, the electoral body insisted that granting the request would affect its preparations for the forthcoming elections.

Tanimu Inuwa, counsel to the INEC, asked the court to vary the orders which gave permission to Obi and Atiku to inspect all the sensitive materials used in the conduct of the presidential election.

But the court refused to grant INEC’s request, saying the commission failed to specify which of the orders it wished to vary.

The court also emphasised that it never granted Obi and LP permission to access the database of INEC as misconceived by the electoral body.

It clarified that what was granted was an order giving Obi and LP permission to do electronic scanning and/or make photocopies of voter registration, and ballot papers used in the conduct of the election.