Kaduna, 11 March, 2023 / 9:07 pm (ACI Africa).
Christian and Muslim leaders in Nigeria’s Kaduna State have appealed for neutrality on the part of religious leaders in the West African nation ahead of the country’s gubernatorial elections that have been postponed by a week.
On Wednesday, March 8, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the postponement of the country’s Saturday, March 11 election of new governors for 28 of the 36 States, citing challenges in logistics, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
“This decision has not been taken lightly but it is necessary to ensure that there is adequate time to back up the data stored on the over 176,000 BVAS machines from the Presidential and National Assembly elections,” INEC spokesman, Festus Okoye, said in a statement referencing the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines that were used during the February 25 voting for the President and members of the National Assembly, and the need to reconfigure them.
The election of governors that is part of Nigeria’s general elections for four-year single terms for major political positions in Africa’s most populous nation is to take place on Saturday, March 18.
In a statement issued Friday, March 10, members of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Jama’atul Nasril Islam (JNI) note with concern that just days before “the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections, the political atmosphere is overheated even much more than we experienced in the run-off to the February 25, 2023 elections.”