Buhari urges Nigerians to remain calm after elections were postponed by EC

Nigeria’s president and the leading opposition candidate urged people to remain calm after a national election scheduled for Saturday was postponed by a week just five hours before polls were due to open.

The chairman of the electoral commission said it was no longer feasible to hold free and fair elections on Saturday due to logistical problems, but he did not elaborate.

Other electoral commission officials and Western diplomats said the problems concerned the inability to transport ballot papers and results sheets to some parts of the country, where 84 million voters have registered to vote.

President Muhammadu Buhari said he is "deeply disappointed" by the last-minute delay of Saturday's election until February 23 and says he is going back to the capital to hear the electoral commission's explanation.

Buhari's statement says the commission had "given assurances, day after day and almost hour after hour that they are in complete readiness for the elections. We and all our citizens believed them."

His statement further appealed Nigerians to remain calm and urged the commission to protect already distributed voting materials and stressed that his administration does not interfere in the commission's work.

He calls this a "trying moment in our democratic journey."

President Buhari, in power since 2015, faces a tight election contest against the main opposition candidate, businessman and former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

At stake is control of Africa’s top crude oil-producing nation and largest economy.

Past elections in Nigeria have been marred by violence, intimidation, and ballot-rigging, and the postponement raised the possibility of an outbreak of unrest.

Earlier presidential elections in 2011 and 2015 were also delayed over logistics and security issues.