Nigeria today postponed its key parliamentary elections till Monday, hours after the polling opened to long queues across the country, with authorities facing a series of organisational and logistic problems.
Nigeria today postponed its key parliamentary elections till Monday, hours after the polling opened to long queues across the country, with authorities facing a series of organisational and logistic problems.
The Election Commission said the polls had to be postponed due to the inability of the electoral body to take delivery of ballot papers and distribute them to polling stations.
Today's parliament vote was to be the first of a three-stage landmark general election this month being seen as a critical test of whether Nigeria can organise a credible ballot after a series of flawed and violent elections.
"In order to maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process, the commission has taken the very difficult but necessary decision to postpone the national assembly elections to Monday, April 4, 2011," the chairman of the country's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, said.
He said the organisational problems involved a vendor that failed to supply necessary election materials.
"A vendor was supposed to deliver the electoral materials and we had confidence in him but he did not deliver by Thursday citing the problem of aircraft diversions in Japan," the chairman of the country's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), professor Attahiru Jega said with lots of apology.
"Later, he assured us the materials will arrive by 5 30 yesterday but unfortunately it did not arrive Lagos till 9 am this morning. There is no way the materials could be distributed before the end of accreditation time." Jega explained further.
Earlier, Nigerians turned up in overwhelming numbers at polling stations which opened on time, but tardiness was witnessed in the election process in several parts of the country.
In Lagos, people kept waiting for electoral officials to show up to start the process.
"We're waiting for the officers of the INEC and I have received signals that they will soon be here," Ayebola Benyamin, a police official, told PTI at a crowded polling station at Mafon bus stop in Idimu, Lagos.
Other polling booths remained without electoral material by midday.
Emmanuel Iffer, a local journalist, told PTI that electoral officials did not reach the polling stations at Maraba and Abacha roads in Abuja by 11 am.
Nigeria, Africa's largest democracy with a population of 150 million, returned to democratic rule in 1999 after many years of military incursion in governance.
It is the third time general elections are being held in Nigeria since military rule ended.
The previous ones - in 2003 and 2007 - were marred by allegations of widespread rigging, voter intimidation and ballot vote snatching.
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