In a sign of the lack of time to reset the voting machines, the Nigerian Electoral Commission decided to postpone the gubernatorial elections scheduled for this weekend for another week, amid opposition parties objecting to a controversial presidential election.

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Edited by| Tony Wild

section -  CJ journalist Africa

Abuja, Nigeria- 9 march 2023

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“This decision has not been taken lightly but it is necessary to ensure that there is adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on 25th February 2023 and then to reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly elections,” electoral body INEC said in a statement late Wednesday.

INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), an electronic voting machine configured with fingerprints and facial recognition features, was at the center of the controversy that blighted the February 25 polls.

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Voters are accredited with the BVAS device, which also transmits election results from polling stations to an online server. But results were not transmitted on time in the last election, sparking allegations of vote rigging.

Several observers including the European Union said the election fell short of expectations and “lacked transparency.”