African securityNigeria delays election by six weeks, citing war with Boko Haram

Published 9 February 2015

The government of Nigeria has postponed the election, originally scheduled for the coming weekend, saying the reason for the postponement was the need to allow international forces to take areas in the country’s north-east from the Islamist Boko Haram. Nigeria’s electoral commission said on Saturday that the election, rather than being held on 14 February, will be held on 28 March. Observers both inside and outside Nigeria said the election delay has political undertones, and that the postponement has more to do with a desperate last-ditch effort by President Jonathan to shore-up his declining political fortunes than with security considerations.

The government of Nigeria has postponed the election, originally scheduled for the coming weekend, saying the reason for the postponement was the need to allow international forces to take areas in the country’s north-east from the Islamist Boko Haram.

Nigeria’s electoral commission said on Saturday that the election, rather than being held on 14 February, will be held on 28 March.

Observers say the election is too close to call.

The Guardian reports that for six years, the administration of the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan has made progress in Nigeria’s ailing agriculture and power sectors, but lagged behind, if not actually retreated, almost everywhere else.

Muhammadu Buhari, Jonathan’s main challenger, has been gaining support in the last few weeks of the campaign. Buhari, 72, is a former general who, for twenty months in 1983-84, ruled Nigeria with an iron hand.

This election, whenever it is held, is the fourth election since the end of military rule in 1998. In 2011 the election was delayed twice, including once less than a week before the scheduled date. The electoral commission said that with a week to go, nineteen million of the seventy million registered voters have yet to collect their voting cards.

In the north, despite security concerns, card collection has been high. The Muslim north has traditionally not voted for Jonathan’s People’s Democracy, and the candidacy of Buhari, himself a Muslim, has spelled even deeper problems for Jonathan’s party in the north.

Last month Jonathan’s convoy was attacked by young men with stones. “Even if you’re not as popular in some states, this was shocking,” an aide said.

The government has been buffeted by other problems. Oil prices have declined to record lows, emptying the treasury and leaving many civil servants unpaid for months. “The global economy has conspired against Jonathan. The momentum has moved so much against him, he can’t slow it,” Bismarck Rewane, an economist at Lagos-based Financial Derivatives, told the Guardian.

The decline in oil prices comes on top the endemic corruption in Nigeria’s oil sector. An audit last week found that at least $1.48 billion had been siphoned from the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Company. Analysts say that the official audit is nothing but a whitewash. A previous report by a respected former central bank governor put the figure up to $20 billion.

Diplomats have expressed concern at the postponement of Nigeria’s election. The United States warned that the government should not use precarious security as a reason for stalling on democracy.

John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, said America was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, and added: “It is critical that the government not use security concerns as a pretext for impeding the democratic process. The international community will be watching closely as the Nigerian government prepares for elections on the newly scheduled dates.”

Philip Hammond, U.K.’s foreign secretary, said the postponement was cause for concern. “The security situation should not be used as a reason to deny the Nigerian people from exercising their democratic rights. It is vital that the elections are kept on track and held as soon as possible.”

Observers both inside and outside Nigeria said the election delay has political undertones, and that the postponement has more to do with a desperate last-ditch effort by President Jonathan to shore-up his declining political fortunes than with security considerations.

The All Progressive Congress, the party of Muhammadu Buhari, Jonathan’s opponent, called the delay “highly provocative” and “a major setback for democracy.”

Jibrin Ibrahim, a political analyst with the Center for Democracy and Development, told the Guardian that Nigeria’s security agencies had forced the delay on “frivolous” grounds. “They say they need six weeks to defeat Boko Haram. Boko Haram has been growing for six years … If in six weeks Boko Haram has not been defeated, they could call for another delay and ultimately destroy Nigerian democracy,” he said.