The electoral commission emerged from an hours-long meeting on Wednesday night to announce it was pushing back polls to elect powerful state governors by a week. The commission attributed the delay to problems with reconfiguring a digital voting system that had been the source of rancour and international criticism after it failed to perform as promised in the presidential elections in Africa’s most populous country on 25 February. Earlier on Wednesday the court of appeal rejected a request by the opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP) and the Labour party to inspect the digital tablets used to screen voters and transmit results from polling stations. The electoral commission said that while the ruling made it possible for it to prepare the tablets for state elections, the ruling had come “far too late”.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN