INEC chairman locked in meeting with commissioners over gov election

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and commissioners of the institution are currently in a closed-door meeting over the coming governorship and state assembly elections.

Several reports claimed that the commission has decided to postpone the exercise earlier scheduled to hold this Saturday, March 11, 2023, over challenges arising from the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Accreditation and Verification Systems (BVAS), but Pulse can't independently confirm this.

However, the ongoing meeting is connected with the ruling of the Appeal Court earlier today which granted the commission the nod to reconfigure BVAS for the Saturday elections.

Recall that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his party had asked the court to prevent INEC from deconstructing the systems in order not to tamper with sensitive data of the presidential election.

Obi is contesting the outcome of the exercise which he claimed was massively rigged against him and his party.

INEC had asked the Appeal Court to grant it permission to reconfigure the machines to be able to deploy them for the governorship and state assembly elections this weekend.

And in a unanimous ruling by a three-member panel of the appellate court, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh on Wednesday, the court held that the commission could go ahead with the reconfiguration but ensure that sensitive presidential election materials were uploaded to back-end server and make true certified copy to Obi and the Labour Party.