INEC Ready For “Possible” Presidential Run-off

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it is already making plans and preparations for the conduct of a run-off presidential election, where no candidate meets the conditional requirements for declaring a winner from votes cast on Feb. 25, 2023.

The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr Festus Okoye, gave the hint at a meeting with Bureau Chiefs/Editors of media organisations on Friday in Abuja.

Okoye said that such plan had been the tradition of INEC for all elections conducted by the commission since the return of democracy since 1999.

He said that INEC was already planning to print double of the total number of ballot papers required for the first ballot, should in case there was rerun election.

He explained that the preparations were always made alone the first because the commission had just 21 days to conduct the rerun or run-off election.

The national commissioner said that before candidate could be declared winner of the presidential election, he or she must have the highest number of votes cast and secure a quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation and the FCT.

He said where the threshold is not met by any candidate, the constitution stated that second election should be conducted for two of the candidates with highest and majority votes in line with the provisions of the constitution.