The electoral body also announced that the governorship and House of Assembly, Abuja (FCT) Area Council elections have also been shifted from 2 March to 9 March.
The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said in the early hours of Saturday that the postponement of the elections was due to logistic and operational problems.
He explained that the postponement will afford the commission the opportunity to address the identified challenges in order to maintain the quality of the elections.
The postponement of the elections came after more than six hours of meeting between the INEC Chairman and 12 national commissioners in Abuja on Friday.
The meeting, which began on Friday evening ended in the early hours of Saturday.
Prof. Yakubu said that INEC would be meeting all the stakeholders at 2pm on Saturday at the International Conference Centre in Abuja to explain the commission’s position.
The general elections are expected to hold in 119,973 polling units across the country, while collation of results will take place in 8,809 Registration Areas or Wards, 774 Local Government Areas and 36 States and the federal capital of Abuja.
It will be recalled that in 2015, the Presidential election was shifted from February 14 to March 28th, 2015, while the Governorship and Assembly elections scheduled for 28 February were shifted to April 11, 2015.