Abuja, Nigeria
CNN
—
Nigeria’s electoral fee has postponed governorship elections deliberate for this weekend by one other week, citing restricted time to reset its voting machines almost two weeks after a controversial presidential vote was disputed by opposition events.
“This choice has not been taken frivolously however it’s essential to make sure that there’s ample time to again up the information saved on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and Nationwide Meeting elections held on twenty fifth February 2023 after which to reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Meeting elections,” electoral physique INEC stated in a statement late Wednesday.
Nigeria isn’t new to ballot delays. Earlier elections within the West African nation have been postponed at very brief discover, generally simply sooner or later earlier than they have been resulting from happen.
INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), an digital voting machine configured with fingerprints and facial recognition options, was on the heart of the controversy that blighted the February 25 polls.
Voters are accredited with the BVAS machine, which additionally transmits election outcomes from polling stations to an internet server. However outcomes weren’t transmitted on time within the final election, sparking allegations of vote rigging.
A number of observers together with the European Union stated the election fell wanting expectations and “lacked transparency.”
The governorship polls initially scheduled for Saturday will now maintain on March 18 and can run concurrently with elections for native parliament representatives.
