Key highlights:
- INEC fixes April 15th for the conduct of supplementary elections.
- Supplementary governorship elections will be held in Adamawa and Kebbi, five Senatorial Districts, 31 Federal and 58 State Assembly constituencies.
- The elections will be held in just a few polling units in some constituencies.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said it will conduct supplementary elections 2 Governorship elections for Adamawa and Kebbi states on the 15th of April.
INEC disclosed this in a statement on Monday night by its National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye after they met and reviewed areas where supplementary elections are required to conclude outstanding Governorship. National and State assembly elections.
They added that due to the nature of Politics in Nigeria, especially for legislative seats, supplementary elections will be held in just a few polling units in some constituencies.
Elections
INEC said that 26 Governorship, 104 Senatorial, 329 federal and 935 state constituency elections have been concluded and winners declared.
- “Consequently, supplementary governorship elections will be held in Adamawa and Kebbi, five Senatorial Districts, 31 Federal and 58 State Assembly constituencies.
- “Owing to the competitive nature of the elections, especially for legislative seats, supplementary elections will be held in just a few polling units in some constituencies.”
Lists
They added a comprehensive list of the polling units by state, Local government, registration area and PVC collection will be published before Wednesday 29th March 2023.
- “The Commission has fixed Saturday 15th April 2023 for the conduct of the supplementary election in the affected polling units “
- “We appeal to all political parties, candidates and stakeholders to note the date and locations of the supplementary elections.
- “ The earlier accreditation for polling and collation agents, observers and the media still subsists for the supplementary elections”.
In case you missed it
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) also insisted that no political party will be allowed to look into the brain of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), IReV or the biometrics of voters.
They admitted that every Nigerian has the constitutional and legal right to protest, however, said that INEC is the regulator of political parties and won’t abdicate its core responsibility to aggrieved political parties.
On reports of the plan to occupy INEC and the Labour party threatening to monitor how INEC is uploading and backing up the results in the commission’s portal as well as whether INEC will allow them to look at how that is being done, they said:
- ‘In terms of issues of protest, the commission is a public trust and as far as the commission is concerned any Nigerian who has any grievance has the constitutional and legal right to come to the commission to protest.
- ‘’The commission would not prevent any individual or group of individuals or any political party or association from coming to protest because the commission is a public trust and is a public institution and so we can’t prevent anybody from coming to protest.
- ‘’On the issue of a political party saying that it wants to come and look at our cloud or look at the IReV or look into the brain of the BVAS, the commission will not allow that to happen. Every political party that deployed polling agents has a copy of the polling unit-level results.
- ‘’So if a political party wants to come into the commission and look at people’s biometrics, we would not allow that to happen. The commission is a regulator of political parties and the political parties cannot just because of some of the challenges that have taken place turn around and want to regulate the commission, the commission will not allow that to happen.’
