David Lawani, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said it respected the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to postpone the governorship and state house of assembly elections from March 11 to March 18, 2023.

This follows the ruling by the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) on the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used for the presidential/national assembly elections held on February 25.

This came just as the Labour Party (LP) said the conduct of INEC in the February 25 elections has done damage to the trust Nigerians once had in the commission’s promise to let the people’s vote count.

However, National Publicity Secretary APC, Mr Felix Morka, in a statement yesterday, urged INEC must do every to protect data stored on its high cloud facilities as directed by the court.

The party advised the electoral body to address the lapses experienced during the presidential election, noting that it was safer to avoid the reoccurrence of the challenges now that the nation was preparing for the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.

The statement read, “While noting its reassurance that data from the Presidential and National Assembly elections will be properly backed up on its cloud facilities, we urge INEC to do everything within its power to preserve and protect the integrity of the extracted data from BVAS as it has committed to do before a court.

“Further, we enjoin INEC to use the opportunity presented by the election postponement to address any gaps or hitches identified in the presidential election to avoid a reoccurrence in the March 18, election.

“Even as presidential candidates and their political parties explore and exercise their constitutional liberty to challenge or defend the outcome of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, we must remind ourselves of the overriding duty that we bear to eschew conduct and action capable of undermining the peace of our country or imperil the capacity of INEC to conduct the upcoming gubernatorial and state Assembly elections.

“Our candidate, now President-Elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerged as the overwhelming choice of Nigerians in the presidential election which was free, fair, and in substantial compliance with the Electoral Act and INEC Guidelines for the 2023 General Elections.

“We are thankful for our renewed presidential mandate, and urge our supporters and indeed all Nigerians to double down on their support for our great Party, and its candidates in the upcoming Gubernatorial and State Assembly election.”

Six die, 79 injured in Ikeja train mishap

*We no longer have confidence in Commission– LP

Meanwhile, the National Chairman of LP, Julius Abure, in an interview in Abuja yesterday, said he had at various fora expressed confidence in the ability of the Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and his team to deliver based on his repeated assurances that the commission would adhere strictly to its rules and the tamper-proof BVAS technology.

According to Abure, INEC not only failed to deliver but had through its subsequent actions shown that it cannot be trusted.

He expressed misgivings over INEC’s various applications to court, reliefs sorting and the postponement of the governorship and state Assembly elections earlier scheduled for Saturday, March 11.

Abure said, “Our major concern is that aspect (of the Appeal Court ruling) which granted INEC the opportunity not to allow us to inspect the BVAS. Our concern stems from the fact that INEC these days is to be trusted.

“INEC will make a promise from one side of the mouth and then swallow their vomit from the other. Recall that in 2019, INEC promised that it had a server only for those servers not to be available when litigants wanted to inspect the server that they claimed they had.

“INEC had gone out of their way to assure and reassure Nigerians, again and again, that election results will be uploaded from polling units to their server and that people are going to view these results from their server but you could see that when it was time for people to start uploading the results, INEC said it had a technical glitch even when they had explained to Nigerians that they had a backup that will roll off into work immediately when the main server had a technical issue.

“All of these brings us to the point that even though INEC had assured us and the courts in their counter affidavits to say that the records in the BVAS will be saved in their backend server we have our doubts because this is not the first time INEC will be telling us that they have a server, they will upload to their server and so forth.

“But the Court in their wisdom has given them privilege and you can see, immediately they got that judgement yesterday, they shifted the elections. If they knew they were going to postpone the governorship election for a week why did they go to court to go and vary the order given to us to inspect materials?

“There was no need for it because one of the reasons they gave to the court was that if they allowed us to inspect the BVAS it would affect the timeline for the election but surprisingly, after getting the court to grant them the request to reconfigure the BVAS they immediately shifted the election.

“One had a lot of doubts about the patriotism, commitment, truthfulness, and integrity of this INEC to do what is right. The way and manner they conducted the last election destroyed the confidence that I had in INEC. Let’s see what stories they will come up with tomorrow.

“Tomorrow is here it’s not far. Since the court gave the order for INEC to allow is inspect materials, INEC has not allowed us. We’ve not been able to inspect, our lawyers have been going there every day, our technical experts have been going there on daily basis and we have not been allowed access.

“At times you begin to wonder whether this INEC is working for Nigerians or some persons somewhere. I’ll be sincere with you, if INEC says they are going to Lagos, I will go and look for them in Sokoto.”