Parties to resume campaigns after Nigeria poll postponement, president warns against skullduggery

ABUJA - President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday accused Nigeria’s electoral commission of incompetence over its organisation of a national election as the main opposition party prepared to hit the campaign trail once again after voting was postponed for a week.

Buhari also warned against any attempts to tamper with the election, now scheduled to take place this coming Saturday. He said anyone trying to steal or destroy ballot boxes and voting material would be dealt with firmly. “I have given the military and the police instructions to be ruthless. We are not going to be blamed for the bad conduct of the election,” he told an emergency meeting of senior members of his All Progressives Congress (APC) party in the capital Abuja.

The opposition has suggested that Buhari, a former military ruler who was later elected president in 2015, was behind the postponement to hold on to power.

But all sides have appealed for calm in a country where past elections have been marred by violence and intimidation.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the delay in the early hours of Saturday, just as some of Nigeria’s 84 million registered voters were already making their way to polling stations. It cited logistical difficulties and problems with transporting election material to far-flung or conflicted areas, and denied any political pressure had been brought to bear. “Definitely the reasons why such incompetence manifests itself has to be explained to the nation. After the election we have to know exactly what really happened,” Buhari said, promising that an investigation would be launched. –