Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari’s Campaign Organisation said the postponement of the 2019 general election by Independent National Electoral Commission is “a huge disappointment.”
“We condemn and deprecate this tardiness of the electoral umpire in the strongest terms possible,” the Director of Media of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, Festus Keyamo, said in a statement on Saturday.
This came few hours after the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, announced the postponement at a press briefing on Saturday morning held at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
“Following a careful review of the implementation of its logistics and operational plan, and the determination to conduct free, fair, and credible elections, the commission came to the conclusion that proceeding with the elections as scheduled is no longer feasible,” Yakubu said.
Keyamo accused the electoral watchdog of conniving with the opposition People’s Democratic Party to scuper the election.
He stated that “the rumour mill is agog with the suggestion that this postponement has been orchestrated in collusion with the main opposition.”
But the opposition People’s Democratic Party has also accused the ruling party of influencing INEC’s decision.
It accused the ruling party of deliberately orchestrating the postponement in order to perfect its plan to rig the elections.
APC, the PDP said, “have been trying all options including but not limited to burning down INEC offices in some states and destroying of electoral materials to create artificial problems upon which to stand for their dubious act.”
“With several of their rigging options failing, they have to force INEC to agree to a shift in the election or a staggered election with flimsy excuses pre-manufactured for the purpose,”PDP’s national chairman spokesman Ike Abonyi said in a statement on Saturday.
