The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it had commenced preparations for conducting by-elections to fill vacant seats in the national and state assemblies.
INEC Chairman’s Chief Press Secretary, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria yesterday in Abuja, said that the commission would soon release more details about the by-elections.
“We have commenced preparations for the conduct of the by-elections. At our meetings with leaders of political parties and security agencies recently, we notified them of our preparations. The current national and state assemblies were inaugurated in June 2023.
“Between June and December 2023, a period of just six months, vacancies occurred in 23 constituencies due to the death or resignation of legislators. In early 2024, the commission conducted nine by-elections. Since then, 16 other vacancies have occurred,” he said.
Oyekanmi said that the challenge with by-elections was that they were unpredictable, not budgeted for, and difficult to plan for in advance.
He said this was why INEC Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu recently appealed to the national assembly to consider other viable alternatives to by-elections for filling vacancies in the national and state assemblies.
Oyekanmi said the call aimed to mitigate the high cost of conducting by-elections in the country. He also said that INEC was working on resuming its nationwide continuous voter registration (CVR) and collection of permanent voter cards (PVCs).
“The resumption of CVR is at the top of the commission’s agenda. It is only a matter of time before the commission announces the date,” he said.
