Abuja: Nigeria’s electoral watchdog the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), postponed Saturday presidential and parliamentary elections for one week, just hours before polls were due to open.
Polling had been due to start at nearly 1,20,000 polling units in Africa’s most populous nation at 0700 GMT, with a record 73 candidates on the ballot.
President Muhammadu Buhari is seeking a second term of office, but is facing a stiff challenge from the main opposition candidate, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar.
The chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, said after late night emergency talks Friday that the timetable was ‘no longer feasible’ for conducting the elections.
“Consequently, the commission has decided to reschedule to Saturday February 23, 2019,” he told reporters at INEC headquarters about five hours before scheduled polling.
Parliamentary elections for 360 seats in the lower House of Representatives and 109 seats in the Senate will be held on the same day. Governorship and state assembly elections will be pushed back to March 9, Yakubu said.
Yakubu said the decision to delay the polls came ‘after a careful review of the implementation of the logistics and operational plans and the determination to conduct free, fair and credible elections’.
“This was a difficult decision for the commission to take but necessary for the successful delivery of elections and the consolidation of our democracy,” Yakubu informed.
Nigeria postponed voting just one week before it was due to be held at the last election in 2015, citing security concerns linked to the Boko Haram insurgency.
AFP