The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, stated its commitment to preventing the recurrence of the errors that happened during the February 25 polls in the upcoming governorship elections on Saturday throughout the country.
During an interview with Arise TV on Friday, Festus Okoye, the Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee at INEC, assured that the voting materials will be delivered early enough to the polling units on Saturday. He also remarked that the commission had gained important insights from the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25. “The commission is determined to improve on its previous performance. What we have done is to learn valuable lessons from previous elections that we conducted, and we’re going to put those lessons into our planning purposes and processes, and into our deployment purposes,” Okoye said. Speaking on the INEC’s readiness, Okoye said, “As of today, what we’re having is what we call state assembly and governorship elections. “In all the states of the federation, both the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines and all the sensitive election materials have left the Central Bank and the various state offices of the federation. “We want to ensure that all polling units open on time. Secondly, we made sure that we reconfigured all the BVAS that will be used for this particular election in terms of making sure that the BVAS perform optimally and also making sure that some of the challenges we had in the previous elections do not reoccur.”
The US government has released a press statement congratulating the president-elect Bola Tinubu after he was declared winner of the 2023 elections. After congratulating Tinubu, the US government urged INEC to correct every error in the election results ahead of the Gubernatorial elections slated on March 11. The statement reads; We understand that many Nigerians and some of the parties have expressed frustration about the manner in which the process was conducted and the shortcomings of technical elements that were used for the first time in a presidential election cycle. Nigerians are clearly within their rights to have such concerns and should have high expectations for their electoral processes. We join other international observers in urging INEC to improve in the areas that need the most attention ahead of the March 11 gubernatorial elections. There are well-established mechanisms in place for the adjudication of electoral disputes, and we encourage any candidate or party seeking to challenge the outcome to pursue redress through those mechanisms. We call on all parties, candidates, and supporters to refrain from violence or inflammatory rhetoric at this critical time. We commend the active participation of civil society and the media in advancing electoral norms and political discourse on issues of importance to citizens. We note with concern reports that numerous members of the media were attacked during the course of the election, and we urge the government, security forces, political actors, and all citizens to respect the media’s critical role by refraining from any damaging acts against them and ensuring accountability for such acts when they do occur. We also congratulate the Nigerian people, especially the large number of youths who are relatively new to the political process, for demonstrating their strong commitment to democracy.” 
Arsenal, who were kicked off the top of the Premier League table following a 3-1 defeat to Manchester City on Wednesday, February 15, will be facing Aston Villa at lunchtime today. Speaking up against the “difficult” schedule he claimed Arsenal has been subjected to, Arteta that rules for Champions League teams should be instituted. 
He said; “There are certain rules with the Champions League. When you are playing on Wednesday night and then you cannot play [on Saturday lunchtime]. So I think that should apply to any competition. But I think following the same principle, physiologically, that is very difficult to turn around on that period to get the best outcome and reduce the injury risk for players, but that’s it.” 
While it was suggested at the time that he was joking, the 51-year-old South Africa-born business magnate later added: “Although, if it were any team, it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid.” It is expected that a bid of up to £4.5bn could be enough to get a takeover over the line even though United’s American owners reportedly wanted between £6bn and £8bn to sell up. The report notes that dozens of interested parties have already expressed their interest and signed the necessary paperwork to be granted access to confidential data about the club. United’s next owners will likely need to have money in reserve – up to £2bn, according to some estimates – to commit to redeveloping Old Trafford. This should be no issue for Musk, even though Tesla’s plummeting stock price led to his net worth being slashed by £150bn since November. Should United fetch a sum of £4.5bn as expected, they would become the most expensive sports team in the world, surpassing NFL side the Denver Broncos, who were bought for £3.7bn last year. 
