Nigerian candidates point fingers after vote’s delay
YOLA, Nigeria – Nigeria’s top candidates on Saturday condemned the lastminute decision to delay the presidential election for a week until Feb. 23, blaming each other but appealing to Africa’s largest democracy for calm.
The decision, announced a mere five hours before the polls were to open, is a costly one. 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.
Electoral commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu told surprised election observers, diplomats and others that the delay had nothing to do with insecurity or political influence. He blamed “very trying circumstances” including bad weather affecting flights and the fires at three commission offices that were an apparent “attempt to sabotage our preparations.”
If the vote had gone on as planned, polling units could not have opened at the same time nationwide. “This is very important to public perceptions of elections as free, fair and credible,” Yakubu said, adding that as late as 2 a.m. they were still confident the election could go ahead.
He hoped this would be the last postponement of the election, a sprawling affair with over 23,000 candidates for various posts and more than 84 million registered voters.
Some bitter voters in the capital, Abuja, and elsewhere who traveled 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.
“Their plan is to provoke the public, hoping for a negative reaction, and then use that as an excuse for further antidemocratic acts,” the party said. Its statement urged Nigerians to remain calm and turn out in greater numbers a week from now.
Abubakar, speaking to reporters outside his home in northern Adamawa state, urged calm. “We will overcome this. You can postpone an election, but you cannot postpone destiny,” he later tweeted. 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 for calm and stressed that his administration does not interfere in the commission’s work.
A spokesman for Buhari’s campaign committee, Festus Keyamo, accused Abubakar’s party of causing the delay to create a “breather” and try to slow the president’s momentum.
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.