The National Secuiry Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, Col Sambo Dasuki (red), has advised for the delay next month’s elections to give organisers more time to distribute millions of biometric ID cards to voters.
dasuki said he had told the chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that a postponement within the three months allowed by the law would be a good idea.
The main opposition coalition said it would oppose any postponement, and the electoral commission said it had not received any such official communication from Dasuki.
The elections, currently scheduled for 14 February, will be the first where Nigeria’s 68.8 million voters must have a biometric cards – a measure introduced to guard against fraud that has plagued past polls.
But there have been technical glitches in data collection and officials have not explained how they will hold the election in parts of the northeast gripped by a violent uprising by Islamist Boko Haram rebels.
How Africa’s biggest economy conducts this poll will be closely watched by investors and foreign powers, amid the uprising and an economic crisis linked to low oil prices.
Dasuki, speaking at London think-tank Chatham House, said INEC had distributed 30 million cards in the past year but had another 30 million to hand out.
He said INEC had assured him it would achieve this in time for the February date, but he thought it would make more sense to take more time and there was a 90-day window during which the election could legally take place.
“It costs you nothing, it’s still within the law,” Dasuki said he had told the INEC chair.
Dasuki said it was for INEC and not for him to decide.
“Why are they not ready? Why should we postpone? We say ‘no’ to postponement,” Lai Mohammed, spokesperson of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), told Reuters. “They know that if they don’t postpone they can’t win. They are just terrified.”
INEC spokesperson Kayode Idowu said there were currently no plans to delay.
“It is not a conversation of the commission’s at all. As far as we are talking now, the date is what it is,” Idowu said.
The idea to tamper with the timetable or shift the election entirely for interim transitional government that would midwife a new election was first mooted by Tunde Bakare, respected preacher and former running mate to Muhammadu Buhari.
Though INEC has continued to give assurances on the collection of biometric cards, the reality on the ground leaves much to be desired. Incidentally, the distributions appears to have been most slack in the South which is the major support base of the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan.
