By RFIPubliée on 16-02-2019Modified on 02-16-2019 at 14:06

In Nigeria, voters were taken aback this Saturday: the legislative and presidential polls were postponed by one week. Initially, 84 million Nigerians were expected to vote from eight o'clock this morning. A decision that the electoral commission justifies by logistical concerns without going into detail.

The date of February 16 was no longer tenable to guarantee " free, credible and transparent elections, " says the Electoral Commission, in a statement broadcast around three o'clock in the morning (2 pm UTC) on Saturday. This contrasts with the assurances given by the president of this structure earlier this week. Mahmood Yakubu, head of Inec, assuring a few days ago, that everything was ready and that the vote would be held on due date.

This morning, Inec does not specify the nature of the difficulties encountered in the preparation of the elections. Is it a lack of human resources to oversee this election, which mobilizes 84 million voters? Did all the polling stations receive the election material? Or is it just a financial problem? Nothing has filtered for the moment on the reasons for this postponement.

Difficulties this last week

That said, in recent days, the Electoral Commission has faced difficulties: three of its centers have been burned, electoral material has been lost. On Wednesday, in Anambra State, nearly 4,965 voters' card readers went up in smoke. These are indispensable tools, since voting is biometric. The machines must be able to check the validity of the voter cards. At the time, the Inec assured that this material would be replaced quickly, but some observers, joined this morning, now express doubts about these assurances.

The Electoral Commission has scheduled a press conference in the early afternoon. A conference is obviously eagerly awaited, because in Nigeria, everyone is taken aback by the fact that an election can be postponed only five hours before the opening of the 120,000 polling stations.

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