Nigeria postpones parliamentary elections till Monday
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Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Saturday announced the postponement of the general elections amid hitches caused by poor logistics.
The elections which is now slated for Monday is meant for the 109 seats in the Senate and the 360 seats for the House of Representatives.
The general elections for the National Assembly have been sensationally postponed across all the states until Monday, Attahiru Jega, the INEC chariman, told a press conference in Abuja.
An unprecedented late arrival of result sheets was the reason for the postponement, he told reporters.
Jega was quick to apologize to the millions of voters who had turned out early, saying he deeply regrets the shift in date.
He blamed unspecified vendors for the late arrival of the material which only reached Abuja at 9 a.m. local time on Saturday.
According to Jega, the vendors equally blamed the situation in Japan for compelling them to divert the supply of result sheets.
The INEC chairman said the lack of ballot papers was not really the issue but that it was the complete absence of results sheets in the 36 states that forced the postponement.
He decline to comment on whether Monday would now be a public holiday but said that he expected the authorities would make an announcement imminently.
Jega expressed his confidence that there would be no further delays to the process because all electoral material had now arrived in the country.
