The New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) has deemed the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) dishonest regarding the postponement of the 2023 state and parliamentary gubernatorial elections.
Recall that INEC moved the election from 11 March to 18 March, by order of the Court of Appeal granting the Commission the power to reconfigure the dual-mode voter recognition system “BVAS“.
NNPP National Publicity Secretary Agbo Major said INEC should be proactive and provide BVAS instead.
The major said the party had no problem with postponing the election because the reasons given by the Commission were important.
However, he said the electoral arbitration was misleading, adding that the Commission was struggling with national stability.
He said:
“We have no problem with that because the reasons advanced by INEC are germane, that they needed time to reconfigure those BVAS.
“You know that the order was just vacated a few days ago and there is no way they will be able to reconfigure BVAS that will go round the over 176,000 polling units and have them deployed across the country within three days and we see reasons with that.
“But the question we keep asking is that with the huge resources made available to INEC, why were they not able to procure enough so that in an event of a stalemate like this, they will have a set of spare BVAS to deploy.
“Remember also that they have been telling us that they have made an arrangement in such a way that in the event that anyone fail, there will be a standby BVAS machine that will be deployed. Where are they? The implication of that is that for every polling unit, there should be two BVAS – one working and one on standby. If that is the case, where is the second set?
“I think these people are just being deceitful. That is my thinking about what INEC is doing. Whether anybody like it or not, they are toiling with the stability of our nation and that is uncalled for.”
