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On 2 April 2011, 73 million Nigeria gathered in polling stations across the country to cast their vote for the parliamentary elections. The accreditation process was supposed to end by 12:00 a.m, to be followed by the actual voting.

However, the Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC) declared in the morning of 2 April 2011 that the vote would be postponed to Monday 4th of April. According to a statement issued by Professor Attahiru M. Jega, Chairman of INEC, “in many places, our officials have not reported at the polling units, making it now difficult to implement the Modified Open Ballot Procedure that we have adopted. …… While we could have proceeded with the elections in a few states of the country where all the materials are available such as Lagos, Kaduna, Kebbi, Delta, Zamfara and Enugu, among others, in order to maintain the integrity of the elections and retain effective overall control of the process, the Commission has taken the difficult but necessary decision to postpone the National Assembly elections to Monday, April 4, 2011”.

The African Union deployed its observer teams across Nigeria on Friday 1st of April 2011. The team will remain on the ground to observe the rescheduled elections and will be returning to Abuja for debriefing the day after.