The electoral body gave June 17, 2022, as the deadline for the names of parties’ presidential candidates and their running to be uploaded on its website.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Nigeria’s electoral commission, has given political parties one week to submit the names of their presidential candidates and their running mates.

The electoral body gave June 17, 2022, as the deadline for the names of parties’ presidential candidates and their running to be uploaded on its website.

It gave July 15, 2022, as the deadline for the names of governorship candidates and the running mates to be uploaded on the website. The names must be uploaded on the website on or before 6 pm on the deadline dates.

The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, in a post on the commission’s Facebook page, said, “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. The portal will automatically shut down at 6.00pm (1800hrs) on Friday 17th June 2022 for national elections and 6.00pm (1800hrs) on Friday 15th July 2022 for State elections.”

As of the time of filing this report, SaharaReporters can confirm that no presidential candidate has named their running mate or filed the relevant information to INEC as many of the political parties had their presidential primary elections on Thursday, the last day for primaries. 

While the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar is expected to name a running mate from the southeastern part of Nigeria, his rival in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu is expected to pick a northerner as his vice-presidential candidate.

It is expected that Atiku and Tinubu, both Muslims, will pick a Christian southerner and a Christian northerner respectively, as religion is a sensitive issue in the country.

Also, the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Mr Peter Obi from the South East is expected to pick his running mate from the North West or North East, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) is expected to pick his running mate from Southern Nigeria.