Nigeria has postponed elections scheduled for next weekend to allow international forces to regain control of areas in the north-east of the country currently held by the Islamist extremists, Boko Haram.

The country’s electoral commission said on Saturday night that the election, which had been scheduled for 14th February, will now be held on 28 March.

The postponement will increase tension surrounding an intense election campaign which has been conducted in the shadow of Boko Haram’s brutal assaults on towns and villages of the north-east.

Analysts say the election is too close to call. “It will be different this time, just because everything is so public nowadays,” said Bismarck Rewane, an economist at Lagos-based Financial Derivatives. “The stakes have been heightened so much through Twitter and social media, everyone is tracking everything.”

Groundwork laid for arrival of 7,500 mixed multinational Force

Very soon an operation of 7,500 mixed multinational Force will arrive in Cameroon to fight alongside Cameroonian and Chadian troops already in the field against the Boko Haram Islamic sect in the Far North Region.

Setting the groundwork during a two-day deliberation at the Yaoundé Conference Centre last February 5 and 6, some 60 security experts concluded that the Boko Haram sect that is continuously causing atrocities, be mercilessly wiped off.

The meeting came barely a week after Heads of State and governments of the African Union met in their Conference at Addis-Abeba, Ethiopia and decided that a mixed multinational force of 7,500 troops of the Lake Chad Basin Commission be constituted and dispatched to Cameroon to fight against Boko Haram.

The Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defense, Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo’o while stressing that Boko Haram is not a fatality and that it can be eliminated, reassured that the political will is already there.

He challenged the experts to live up to expectations by giving to the mixed multinational force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the means to succeed in their mission.

“Africa as well as the International Community that attaches a lot of importance to peace and international security is seriously waiting for the pertinent and innovative resolutions of this meeting that will help in the complete eradication of Boko Haram.

President Paul Biya will, with the support of Chad, the mixed multinational force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and the international Community carry on with the war until Boko Haram is totally eradicated”, declared Cameroon Minister of Defense, Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo’o to the experts.

After the elaborate work of these experts drawn from the United Nations, African Union, European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Economic Community of Central African States, Economic Community of West African States, Lake Chad Basin Commission, Benin, France, Great Britain and the United States of America, it has thus paved the way for the African Union to write to the UN Security Council in order to give international legal backing and legitimacy to the mixed multinational force as well as resources needed to support this operation on the field.