The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has expressed shock at the last minute postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled to hold last Saturday.
In a statement issued on Sunday night by the NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, he said that the Congress shares in the pains of those who show an uncommon spirit of patriotism by travelling long distances to perform their civic duty and the outrage of those who had incurred huge and unquantifiable logistic costs.
He said there was no explanation good enough by INEC to justify the sudden postponement due to the repeated assurances from it and the zeal of Nigerians to cast their votes.
He, however, said that given the fact that had the election taken place, a huge number of Nigerians would have been disenfranchised on account of gross and wide-spread logistic deficit, “the postponement, as painful as it is, is a lesser evil of the two.”
Wabba said, “ln light of this, we enjoin all Nigerians to quickly put behind them this ugly incident and brace up for the rescheduled election next weekend.
“In spite of huge costs to them, we call on all Nigerians to self-mobilise on the same scale that they did the previous weekend.
“Let them not be disillusioned or react to this postponement in a manner that will create voter-apathy.
“This will certainly be counter-productive and will in the long run work against the interests of the electorate.”
The NLC president called on institutions to be flexible with their staff to enable them travel in good time to perform their civic duty even if it means government declaring a day or two public holiday to achieve this.
“As for INEC, we do hope they have learnt their lesson. On no account ever again, should they allow this to happen.
“All effort and expertise must be deployed by INEC to guarantee free, fair and credible elections.
“We appeal to all Nigerians to put this incident behind them and go out en mass to vote next weekend,” said Wabba.
