Nigeria election postponed hours before polls due to open after offices set on fire

'This is truly disappointing,' says vice president

(INEC)

Authorities in Nigeria have postponed the country’s presidential election five hours before polls were due to open.

The electoral commission said that the vote would be delayed until 23 February due to unspecified “challenges”.

“This was a difficult decision to take but necessary for successful delivery of the elections and the consolidation of our democracy,” said commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu, in the early hours of Saturday.

A logistics review led the commission to conclude that going ahead with the election was “no longer feasible,” he added.

The decision comes days after the commission reported fires at electoral offices in the states of Anambra and Plateu.

Voting materials are also yet to reach parts of the country, according to local news reports.

“Some result sheets and some ballot papers are reportedly missing,” a commission official said.

“We want to track every (piece of) sensitive material, take inventory of what we have and what is missing”.

Tens of millions of Nigerian voters were expected to cast their ballots on Saturday, in a close race between current president Muhammadu Buhari and his main challenger Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president.

Both men have pledged to work for a peaceful election, even as their supporters caused alarm with allegations of vote-rigging.

The Situation Room, a civil society collective monitoring the vote, said in a statement that “any suggestion that the election be held in a staggered manner will be totally unacceptable, and would be a recipe for a disastrous election”.

News of the vote’s delay began spreading in the early hours of Saturday and was greeted with dismay from political figures.

“This is truly disappointing but ... Nigeria will prevail,” a spokesperson for vice president Yemi Osinbajo said on Twitter.

Nigerian officials also postponed the 2015 presidential election because of deadly instability in the country’s northeast.

Mr Buhari is currently in Daura, his hometown, where he had been planning to vote.

The incumbent president has worried many Nigerians after spending more than 150 days outside the country for still-unspecified medical treatment.

Mr Abubakar, a billionaire, has campaigned against him under the slogan “Let’s Make Nigeria Work Again” and has promised to use his business acumen to alleviate poverty in the country.

Additional reporting by agencies