YOLA, Nigeria: Nigerians awoke on Saturday to find the presidential election delayed — just five hours before polls were scheduled to open — until Feb 23 because of what the electoral commission called unspecified “challenges”.
The top candidates condemned the decision and blamed each other but appealed to the people of Africa’s largest democracy to stay calm, while they rushed back to the capital to learn more about what went wrong.
The postponement was announced a mere five hours before the polls were to open. The decision is a costly one, and authorities now must decide what to do with already delivered voting materials in a tense atmosphere where some electoral facilities in recent days have been torched.
Some bitter voters in the capital, Abuja, and elsewhere who travelled home to cast their ballots said they could not afford to wait another seven days. They warned that election apathy could follow.
The party backing top opposition challenger Atiku Abubakar accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of “instigating this postponement” with the aim of ensuring a low turnout at the polls.
“Their plan is to provoke the public, hoping for a negative reaction, and then use that as an excuse for further anti-democratic acts,” the party said in a statement. It urged Nigerians to remain calm and turn out in greater numbers a week from now.
A calm-looking Abubakar, speaking to reporters outside his home in northern Adamawa state, said his party would decide on the way forward after an electoral commission briefing Saturday afternoon. A party spokesman in Delta state in the restive south said the commission “has destroyed the soul of Nigeria with this act”.
Buhari said he was “deeply disappointed” after the electoral commission had “given assurances, day after day and almost hour after hour that they are in complete readiness for the elections. We and all our citizens believed them”.
His statement appealed to Nigerians for calm during the “trying moment in our democratic journey” and stressed that his administration does not interfere in the commission’s work.
One ruling party campaign director in Delta state, Goodnews Agbi, told The Associated Press it was better to give the commission time to conduct a credible vote instead of rushing into a sham vote “that the whole world will criticise later”.
Commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu said in the early-morning announcement that “this was a difficult decision to take but necessary for successful delivery of the elections and the consolidation of our democracy”.
Frustrated voters gathered in the capital. “I came all the way from my home to cast my vote this morning … and then I got informed that the election has been canceled, so that is the reason why I am not happy, and I’m very, very angry,” voter Yusuf Ibrahim said.
Elsewhere, some Nigerians turned to playing football instead, or anguishing over rescheduling weddings, exams and other milestones because of the voting delay.
A civic group monitoring the election, the Situation Room, said the delay “has created needless tension and confusion” and called on political parties to avoid incitement and misinformation.
Nigeria postponed the previous presidential election in 2015 because of deadly insecurity in the northeast, which remains under threat from Islamic extremists.
More than 84 million voters in the country of 190 million had been expected to head to the polls in what is seen as a close and heated race between Buhari and Abubakar, a billionaire former vice-president.
Both have pledged to work for a peaceful election even as their supporters, including high-level officials, have caused alarm with vivid warnings against foreign interference and allegations of rigging.
When Buhari came to power in 2015 he made history with the first defeat of an incumbent president in an election hailed as one of the most transparent and untroubled ever in Nigeria, which has seen deadly post-vote violence in the past.
Now Buhari could become the second incumbent to be unseated. This election is a referendum on his record on insecurity, the economy and corruption, all of which he has been criticised by some Nigerians for doing too little too slowly.
The decision early Saturday may heighten tensions in what has been a tight race in Africa’s biggest democracy between Buhari, a 76-year-old former military ruler, and businessman and ex-vice president Abubakar, 72. Analysts were split down the middle over who would win. Both Buhari’s All Progressives Congress and Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party condemned the delay.
“There is a possibility that popular anger and the manner of the postponement could galvanise more people to come out to vote,” said Cheta Nwanze, head of research at SBM Intelligence in Lagos, the commercial capital. An increased turnout could favor the challenger, he added.
Abubakar described the delay as part of a plot by Buhari’s party to ensure a low turnout.
The election commission declined to be specific about the causes for the delay until it briefs the parties involved.
“Some of it is incompetence, frankly,” said Amaka Anku, Africa analyst at Eurasia Group. “You put someone in charge of something and they say yes everything is fine until they can’t cover up anymore.”