• Nigeria’s electoral commission has postponed governorship elections.
• Due to a lack of time to reset its voting machines.
• In the past, elections in the nation of West Africa have been called off at the last minute.

Nigeria’s electoral commission has postponed governorship elections scheduled for this weekend by another week, almost two weeks after a contentious presidential vote that was challenged by opposition parties.

The commission cited a lack of time to reset its voting machines as the reason.

“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.

Election delays are not new in Nigeria.

In the past, elections in the nation of West Africa have been called off at the last minute—sometimes just a day before they were scheduled to take place.

The issue that marred the elections on February 25 was around INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), an electronic voting device equipped with fingerprint and facial recognition characteristics.

The BVAS gadget, which also transmits election results from polling places to an online server, is used to accredit voters. Nonetheless, there were accusations of vote manipulation in the most recent election since results were not released on time.

The European Union was among the observers who claimed that the election “lacked openness” and fell short of expectations.

Elections for the governor, which were initially set for Saturday, will now take place on March 18 in conjunction with votes for members of the local parliament.

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