ABUJA (Reuters) -Nigeria’s electoral commission has suspended the senatorial election in southeastern Enugu, where the opposition Labour Party candidate was killed, the commission’s chairman Mahmood Yakubu said on Friday.
One opposition party candidate and the driver of a campaign minibus belonging to another party were killed in a series of coordinated attacks in Enugu State on Thursday ahead of an election on Saturday, police said.
“There will be no senatorial election in Enugu East senatorial district,” Yakubu said at the Independent National Eelectoral Commission’s (INEC) news conference, it’s last ahead of Saturday’s election.
“Materials already delivered for the senatorial election will remain in the custody of the central bank in the state until the new date for the election.”
Yakubu said voting for the senatorial seat would now be held on March 11, when Nigerians elect the country’s state governors.
Nigerians are due to elect their next president and lawmakers against a chaotic backdrop of armed conflict in the northeast, high levels of crime and shortages of cash, fuel and electricity.
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Lagos; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Alex Richardson, James Macharia Chege and Tomasz Janowski)
