INEC Chairman , Mahmood Yakubu has announced that forthcoming March 18 Gubernatorial elections will be held in only 28 states out of the 36 that make up the Federation.
Mahmood Yakubu said this at an interagency consultative committee meeting on election security at the INEC Conference room in Abuja.
The INEC boss explained that the Gubernatorial election will not hold in eight states because they were held off cycle. He however stated that other Constituency elections will hold as scheduled.
States where elections will not hold include Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo and Ekiti. Others are Imo,Kogi, Ondo and Osun.
“The Governorship elections will hold in 28 states of the Federation. As you are aware, governorship elections in eight states, are held off cycle and therefore not conducted during the general election. However, elections will be for all the 933 state constituencies nationwide.
He added that the March 18 election involves more constituencies than the presidential and National Assembly elections.
“Unlike the last election involving 470 constituencies (1 presidential, 109 senatorial districts and 360 House of Representatives), The state election will involve 1021 constituencies (28 governorship and 993 State Assembly seat).
The elections were initially scheduled for Saturday, March 11th but were postponed by one week. The Commission said that the election was postponed to allow adequate timing for the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS ahead of state polls.
INEC had approached the courts on Monday to seek permission to reconfigure the BVAS and got their request granted Wednesday, two days to the initial date of the elections. This made the body make the decision to postpone the election.
