The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed Saturday, February 16, 2019 for the Presidential and National Assembly elections, while the Governorship/State Assembly/Federal Capital Territory Area Council Elections are scheduled for Saturday 2nd March 2019.
In a statement posted on its website today, Thursday, the electoral commission said that the dates have been fixed in accordance to the constitution and the electoral Act, saying the Nigerian constitution provides for elections to hold not earlier than 150 days and not later than 30 days to the end of the incumbent’s tenure.
“In order to ensure certainty in our dates for elections, and to allow for proper planning by the Commission, political parties, security agencies, candidates and all stakeholders, the Commission has decided to fix the date for the National Elections for the third Saturday in February of the election year, followed by State elections two weeks later.”
The statement which was issued by the National Commissioner (In charge of South West), Prince Solomon Soyebi, said that the Nigeria’s democracy is maturing and that the Commission believes that there should be certainty with regard to the timetable for elections.
“For instance, in the United States, general elections always hold on the second PRESS Tuesday of November in the election year. In Ghana, it’s the 7th of December of the election year, while in other places like Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Costa Rica and Switzerland, the dates are also known in advance.”
The commission promised that as part of its routine consultations with stakeholders, it would hold the next regular quarterly meetings with stakeholders as follows:
- Tuesday 14th March –Meeting with Political Parties
- Wednesday 15th March – Meeting with Civil Society Organizations
- Friday 17th March – Meeting of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES).
- Monday March 21 – Meeting with Media organizations. Our invitations have been sent to the respective stakeholders
INEC assured Nigerians that it would remain fully committed to the sanctity of the electoral process and would never protect any of its staff, no matter highly placed, found to have violated the provisions of the Electoral Act and our guidelines. [myad]
