2023: Nominations Without Running Mates Will Be Invalid, INEC Warns Political Parties
As the deadline for the conduct of political party primaries elapsed yesterday, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has reminded political parties not to submit candidates without running mates, saying such nominations would outrightly be declared invalid.
Speaking at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, yesterday in Abuja, INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said candidates who did not emerge through democratic nomination processes would also not be accepted.
According to him, the meeting was called to review a number of inter-related activities, particularly the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration CVR exercise and the submission of the list of candidates by Political Parties.
On the nomination process, Yakubu said: “Turning to the nomination of candidates by political parties for the 2023 general election, all primaries end today, (yesterday), Thursday, June 9, 2022.
“For the next one week from tomorrow, June 10, 2022, all political parties are required to submit their list of candidates for national elections (presidential/vice presidential, senatorial and House of Representatives) latest by Friday, June 17, 2022.
“For state elections (governorship/deputy governorship and State Houses of Assembly), the list of candidates shall be uploaded from July 1 to 15, 2022, as already provided in the timetable and schedule of activities for the 2023 general election already released by the commission.
“All political parties are required to upload the details of their candidates for each constituency to the INEC Candidate Nomination Portal, ICNP. To achieve this objective, four officials recommended by each of the 18 political parties were trained on the procedure for uploading the nomination forms to the dedicated web portal. Confidential Access Codes to the portal have already been given to each Political Party to facilitate the uploading of its nominations.
“For emphasis, the Commission wishes to remind Political Parties that only the names of candidates that emerged from democratic primaries as provided by Sec. 84 of the Electoral Act 2022 shall be submitted to the Commission.
“Similarly, the list of all Presidential and Governorship candidates must be accompanied by the names of their running mates (i.e. Vice Presidential and Deputy Governorship candidates) without which the nomination is invalid. All nominations must be uploaded to the portal on/or before the deadlines.
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