The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC on Saturday postponed presidential and parliamentary elections for one week, just hours before polls were due to open.
Voting had been due to start at nearly 120,000 polling units in Africa’s most populous nation at 0700 GMT, with a total of 73 candidates on the ballot.
President Muhammadu Buhari is seeking a second term of office but is facing a stiff challenge from the main opposition candidate, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar.
But the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, said proceeding as previously scheduled was not feasible.
He added the delay was necessary to hold free and fair elections.
“The commission came to the conclusion that proceeding with the election as scheduled is no longer feasible. Consequently, the commissioners decided to reschedule the presidential and national assembly elections to Saturday 23 February 2019,” he said
Parliamentary elections for 360 seats in the lower House of Representatives and 109 seats in the Senate will be held on the same day.
Governorship and state assembly elections will be pushed back to March 9, Mr Yakubu said.
The election has been viewed by many as a referendum on Buhari’s first term, which was marred by his long absence due to illness, economic slowdown and government’s failure to effectively deal with insecurity and corruption cases.
Nigeria’s presidential elections were also delayed in 2011 and 2015 due to logistics and insecurity and that seems to be the trend that the subsequent elections follow.
Before the announcement, there were several concerns commenting over the elections.
An electoral commission official said that “some result sheets and some ballot papers are reportedly missing. We want to track every (piece of) sensitive material, take inventory of what we have and what is missing”.
And a government official said, “The legitimacy of the entire process will be questioned and the winner could lack the moral authority to superintend the affairs of the state.”
One diplomat also said, “Sensitive materials (ballot papers and results sheets) have been delayed in being distributed.”
Entirely, the instability that has led to the announcement is linked to the Boko Haram insurgency.
The elections will now be held on February 23, 2018.