A total of 4,613,291 Nigerians who have collected their Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) are expected to participate in today’s by-elections to replace members who died or resigned their memberships of the national and state assemblies, as well as rerun elections at designated constituencies or polling units (PUs) as ordered by the election appeal tribunals.
The elections involve 26 states of the federation, including 9 states where two senators, four members of the House of Representatives and three members of state Houses of Assembly will be elected in by-elections to replace members of the national and state assemblies.
The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said that in all, the elections would fill vacancies in not less than three senatorial districts, 17 federal and 28 state constituencies spread across 80 local government areas, 575 registration areas/wards and 8,934 polling units involving 4,904,627 registered voters, out of which 4,613,291 PVCs have been collected.
The affected states are Ebonyi, Yobe, Kebbi, Lagos, Ondo, Taraba, Benue, Borno, Kaduna, Plateau, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Cross River, Delta, Enugu, Jigawa, Katsina, Adamawa, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Kano, Nasarawa, Niger, Oyo, Sokoto and Zamfara.
Some notable vacant seats to be filled are those of President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila; Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi; Senator Ibrahim Geidam; Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, and Tanko Sununu, who all resigned to take up appointments in the present administration.
There is also Isma’ila Maihanchi, a member-elect from Taraba State who died before the inauguration of the National Assembly, and Abdulkadir Danbuga from Sokoto, who died in October 2023.
The INEC chairman assured of the commission’s readiness for the elections, saying the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had delivered materials to the affected locations and security operatives concluded arrangements to ensure hitch-free elections.
Apart from logistics arrangements, the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES), comprising INEC, Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) and all security agencies, met a fortnight ago to map strategies to ensure the security of lives and property during the elections.
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