INEC has rescheduled Governorship and State House of Assembly elections earlier fixed for March 11 to March 18, and campaigns would continue until midnight of Thursday (March 16).

In a statement last night by its National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr Festus Okoye, the commission said that the decision was necessary to ensure adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices used for the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections, and then reconfigure them for the Governorship and State Assembly polls.

Okoye said the action was also necessary given the lack of a clearly defined timeframe for the inspection could disrupt the commission’s ability to conduct the outstanding elections.

Okoye reiterated that INEC was not against litigants inspecting election materials, and assured all political parties and candidates that the data from the Presidential