Abuja—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.

A political group known as Peter Obi Grassroots Alliance (POGA) has stated that they will go spiritual for Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party to become victorious in the 2023 election.

It was reported by Vanguard that the group said it has began vote mobilization exercise in order to educate the grassroots on how to know their polling units, wards, thumb-print on election, party logo, as well as party Candidate.

(Photo credit: Vanguard)

Kenechukwu Udokwu, the National Coordinator of POGA while speaking about the votes mobilization and sensitization exercise in Abuja, said that many people don’t know their polling unit or wards.

He said that in 2023 election, the image and name of the Labour Party presidential candidate will not appear on the ballot paper, or the LP logo which has the mother, the father, and the child.

According to him, “the POGA will go spiritual in the upcoming election like what happened inside the Holy Book Goliath and David by faith and God's grace Peter Obi is the next president of Nigeria," Odokwu said.