FOLLOWING late hour postponement of the 2019 general elections, Nigerians including presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (ACC), Omoyele Sowore have reacted to the new development.
Sowore in his verified twitter handle, described the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as postponing the judgement day.
“New date for Nigeria’s Presidential Election is NOW February 23rd 2019…Postponing their day of judgement by one week #TakeItBack.” He stated.
INEC has said the decision for the postponement was part of efforts to ensure fairness, credibility and transparency in the 2019 electoral process. It shared the information on its social media platform at the early hours of the election day – 3:10am.
It attributed the postponement to the need to review its logistics and operational plan.
“The Elections now to hold on; 23rd February, 2019 for presidential and National Assembly while the governorship, State House of Assembly and the FCT Area Council Elections is to hold on 9th March, 2019.”
Kingsley Moghalu, presidential candidate for Young Progressive Party (YPP), is yet to comment as at the time of compiling this news story.
Fela Durotoye, presidential candidate for the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), is also yet to react to the new decision from INEC as at the time of filing this report.
The former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, two days earlier, predicted planned postponement of the election, claiming that some ‘cabals’ in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) were behind the plot.
“Two days ago, I told Nigerians that the presidency cabal were considering postponement of the elections because they knew that they can’t win. Now I’m vindicated. With this, they have only succeeded in making their situation worse. Nigerians will defeat this tyranny ultimately.” Fayose added in a new tweet.
Social media influencer, Dr. Dipo (@OgbeniDipo), also questioned the decision of INEC, despite assurances of preparedness for the elections.
Describing the situation as gross incompetence, he added that some Nigerians had travelled five hours or more away from home to exercise their voting right.
“INEC had 4 years to plan for this election. Why is Nigeria so dysfunctional?” He queried.
In her reaction, Lovify (@loveadins) expressed concerns on several challenges prospective voters would have gone through until the announcement came on the election day.
“You tell us this after people struggled to get their Pvcs, schools have shut down, poor Nigerians have travelled to their states, people slept overnight in their polling centres just to vote,…give us one reason why we should not swear for you?”.
Olugbenga heads the Investigations Desk at The ICIR. Do you have a scoop? Shoot him an email at oadanikin@icirnigeria.org. Twitter Handle: @OluAdanikin