From Romanus Ugwu and Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), yesterday, gave insight into the method it will adopt to determine winner of the 2023 presidential and governorship elections, should the polls go into run-off.

It explained that in a situation where winners fail to emerge at first ballot, the rule specifies that two candidates among the participating political parties would take part in the fresh election.

National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, made the disclosure in Lagos at a two-day capacity building workshop on the commission’s processes, innovation, preparations for the 2023 general election.

He said: “The determination of the winners of any election conducted by INEC is governed by the constitution, the Electoral Act and the regulations and guidelines of the commission.

“The determination of winners for presidential and governorship elections are governed by a different constitutional and legal threshold from seats in the national and state assemblies which are simply ‘first pass the post’.

“By Section 134 of the constitution where there are more than two presidential candidates, for a presidential candidate to be declared duly elected, he must secure the highest number of votes cast at the election; and not less than a quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two thirds of all the states in the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

“In a governorship contest, the candidate must secure the highest number of votes cast and quarters of the votes cast in two thirds of all the local government areas of the state. In the event of a candidate not securing this threshold, the commission must conduct a second election.

“Not all the 18 registered political parties sponsoring candidates will participate in this second election. Only two political parties and two candidates will be on the ballot for the second or runoff election. The first will be the presidential candidate that secured the highest number of lawful votes across the federation.

“The second is the one among the remaining candidates that has a majority of votes in the highest number of states. However, where there is more than one candidate with a majority of the votes in the highest number of states, the candidate among them with the highest total votes cast at the election shall be the second candidate for election,” he said.

  Okoye admitted that the serious security facing the country will impact on the poll.

“The country is facing challenges of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and hostage taking, secessionist agitations, farmers/herders clashes and a myriad of other challenges. There are internally displaced persons in several states of the federation and some of them are in camps while others are in the houses of friends and relatives.

“The commission will recreate the polling units and registration centres of IDPs encamped in their state and federal constituency as well as senatorial district and state constituencies and allow them to exercise their democratic mandate of free choice,” he said.

. Calls for issue-based campaigns

Meanwhile, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, has called for issue-based campaigns.

He made the call in Abuja during a sensitisation forum on political broadcasting organised by National Broadcasting Commission (NBC).

Yakubu said in the next two days, campaigns by political parties in public as provided by Section 94(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 will officially commence nationwide.

He, therefore, called for campaigns devoid of hate speech, abusive, intemperate or slanderous language, including insinuations or innuendoes likely to provoke violent reaction, physical attack on supporters of one party by another or destruction of campaign materials.

“This means over the next five months or so, political parties, candidates and their supporters will traverse the country canvassing for votes. They will engage in media appearances and hold town hall meetings…,” he said.