Ghana’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Rashid Bawa has told JoyNews that elections took place in some parts of Northern Nigeria, as of Sunday, February 26 due to late deployment of logistics.

Nigerians went to the polls to elect a new president yesterday, February 25, since the outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, is stepping down after completing his second term.

According to reports, this year’s elections saw a massive turnout of enthusiastic voters, yet the process has been marred by some challenges.

Mr Bawa attested on JoyNews’ The Probe/Nigeria Decides that logistics for the elections were deployed about one hour later than scheduled.

He told the host, Emefa Apawu, “What I observed is that the materials—the logistics— arrived a bit late. The election was supposed to start around 8:30, but most of the logistics were deployed at the various polling stations around 9:30.am

“The logistics arrived a bit late, and therefore in some parts of the north, elections took place today [Sunday], but they just ended those elections.”

Mr Bawa however disclosed that on Saturday, despite the delay in the provision of the logistics, the election ended quite quickly due to the availability of a lot of polling stations.

According to him, “once it started [the elections], within 4-5 hours, they ended it. Everybody voted because they created a lot more polling stations, therefore they have a fewer lines of human beings…

“By 2:30, which is the period within which they are supposed to stop voting, most of the people have voted, and sorting had started. And by 3 o’clock, they have already counted, and they have already registered the results on the various sheets to be uploaded on the portal,” he disclosed.

The High Commissioner added that another thing he observed was that INEC strictly gave out directives that “no media house should call out any of the results on their media platform,” and he explained that these directives were being obeyed.

“That is also something that I observed that is helping a lot, of course in terms of lowering down the tension after the elections,” he said.