The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has announced that the 18 political parties in the country are required to upload names and other details of their candidates, including those vying for the office of President and their running mates; Senatorial and Federal House of Representatives candidates between today, June 10, 2022 to Friday, June 17, 2022.
He also announced that the upload of the list of all the parties’ candidates for state elections, namely, governors and their deputies and state assembly candidates, is scheduled to start on July 1, 2022 and close on the 15th of June, 2022.
The INEC Chairman made the disclosure during a meeting of the Commission’s State Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, held at the INEC headquarters, Abuja.
Professor Yakubu stated that the Commission has concluded arrangements to start uploading the names of nominated candidates of the political parties to the INEC Candidate Nomination Portal, ICNP.
However, he emphasized that only the names of candidates that emerged from democratically-conducted primaries as provided by Section 84 of the Electoral Act 2022, shall be submitted to the Commission, without which the nomination is invalid.
He explained that political parties are required to upload the details of their candidates for each constituency to the INEC Candidate Nomination Portal and that 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.
He further stated that a nomination centre has been set up at the INEC headquarters to receive and process all nominations by political parties, including dedicated telephone lines to serve as Help Desk for any party that may need assistance.
According to him, the Confidential Access Codes to the portal have already been given to each political party to facilitate the uploading of its nominations.
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The INEC Chairman stressed the need for parties to be proactive in responding to deadlines, as the nomination portal would shut down automatically by 6pm on June 17th for national election candidates and 15th July for those of state election.
He said the Commission is responding to requests for deployment of more CVR machines to needy states and LGAs to enhance registration in areas disrupted by insecurity, and assured that no prospective registrants would be left out.
