Nigeria Counts Cost of Last-Minute Vote Delay as Stocks Decline

(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria is surveying the damage from the week-long postponement of general elections that was announced about five hours before voting was due to start on Saturday morning.

The decision has rattled investors and Nigeria’s citizens. While both President Muhammadu Buhari and his main opponent, Atiku Abubakar, condemned the election commission’s delay, the reputation of the entire political class in Africa’s biggest democracy has suffered a body blow.

Nigeria’s stock market fell 1.92 percent by 12.02 p.m. in Lagos, the commercial capital, its biggest drop since early January. The yield on the government’s $1.5 billion Eurobond maturing in November 2027 rose 7 basis points to 7.19 percent, paring last week’s fall. Nigerian assets had rallied since the end of January on the expectation of a smooth election.

“People will look at us and say that Nigeria is not serious; they will look at us and believe we don’t know what we are doing.” said Daniel Nwatu, a 38-year-old market trader in Abuja. “No other country in the whole world can do what we keep doing here.”

Saturday’s 11th-hour announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission marked the third consecutive time that Nigeria has postponed a nationwide vote. A week before the 2015 presidential and parliamentary ballot, it was moved back by more than a month. Buhari went on to win and become the first opposition candidate to take power through the ballot box in Africa’s biggest oil producer.

As well as pushing back the presidential and parliamentary vote to Feb. 23, INEC delayed governorship elections for a week until March 9.

“The personal costs will be high,” Andrew Alli, former chief executive officer of Lagos-based African Finance Corp., said in an emailed response to questions. “But as long as it doesn’t portend some major election dispute after the voting, I don’t think the ultimate effect will be that major.”

Elections in Nigeria have been postponed in the past and those repeated delays reflect “a systemic failure of leadership at the highest level of government, and suggests that our electoral process is deliberately skewed in favor of politicians’ interests,” civic group Social and Economic Rights Accountability Project said in a statement.

While Abubakar, 72, said the postponement was part of a plot by Buhari’s administration to rig the election and stifle voter turnout in areas where he needs big majorities to win, the president, 76, said he was “deeply disappointed” after the electoral body’s “assurances, day after day and almost hour after hour that they are in complete readiness for the elections.”

The delay left election officials and members of the national youth corps across the country stranded. Many Nigerians had traveled to their hometowns to vote and won’t be able to afford a trip for a second weekend running.

“I can’t stay here till next Saturday just to vote and I can’t return here again next week just to vote,” Onyeka Ikoro, a 45-year-old electronics dealer who traveled from Lagos to his hometown of Ohafia in Abia State. “Atiku and Obi will lose my vote. It doesn’t make me happy but what can I do?”

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