The decision to delay the election was decried by many in the country’s leading opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, whose candidate, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, was seen in a recent survey to be neck and neck with incumbent Goodluck Jonathan.
Jonathan’s party, the People’s Democratic Party, accepted the INEC’s verdict.
Even before the postponement, however, many Nigerians had low expectations for the election. A Gallup poll released in January showed that only 13 percent of Nigerians had confidence in the election’s integrity. Among those who disapproved of the sitting government, the rate was a dismal 8 percent.
Nigerians haven’t always had such low confidence in their electoral process,Gallup polls show. In 2011, 51 percent of people were confident in elections, a number that the pollster’s data show has plummeted over the years.
But the ongoing Boko Haram attacks, delays in getting voters cards distributed and tensions among Nigeria’s many ethnic groups have some voters relieved by the postponement.
“It’s a good thing for all Nigerians,” said Samuel Sunday, a market trader in the capital, Abuja, who hasn’t decided on a candidate yet. “People were afraid about the elections.” Many traders who, like him, belong to the Igbo ethnic group, which predominates the southeast, a Jonathan stronghold, were leaving Abuja and other cities farther north. Buhari is expected to get most of the votes in the north, and Igbos are a minority in the country’s northern half.