The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that there were 30 court-ordered rerun and supplementary rerun elections out of which only two were conducted leaving a balance of 28 re-run elections across the country.
He said that after consideration of several issues surrounding the rerun elections, including the time needed for preparations, establishing the full details of the affected areas from court judgements as well as the intervention of the Yuletide, the commission has decided to hold all the 28-outstanding court-ordered rerun elections on Saturday, 25th January, 2020.
INEC National Commissioner/Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Mr. Festus Okoye, said this on Thursday in Abuja at the end of the commission’s 51st regular meeting.
He said the meeting was specifically held to discuss the rerun elections arising from petitions following the 2019 general election and that further details of various activities and timelines will be published later.
“There are, so far, 30 such court-ordered rerun and supplementary rerun elections. Two of these namely, the rerun election for the Ajaokuta Federal Constituency and the supplementary rerun election for the Kogi West Senatorial District were conducted on 30th November 2019.
“Consequently, there are 28 court-ordered elections still outstanding which are distributed across 12 States of the Federation.
“The break down comprises one Senatorial District out of 109; 12 Federal Constituencies out of 360 and 15 State Assembly Constituencies out of 991,” Okoye said.
According to him, in many of the cases, elections are to be rerun in only a few polling units and that the commission will make available further details of the affected areas, including the polling units in due course.
He said that arising from the 2019 general election, 807 post-election petitions were filed at various tribunals, out of which 582 were dismissed, and 183 withdrawn by the petitioners.
“Out of the remaining 42, the tribunals ordered reruns in 30 and issuance of certificates of return in 12 cases,” he said.
