Festus Okoye, Nigeria’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, said 9,518,188 new voters were added to the existing register of 84,004,084 voters.
Okoye said 93.5 million ballots will be used for the presidential election on February 25, 2022, and the remaining 93.5 million will be used for a runoff if there is no clear winner. Likewise for states, he said.
According to him, the Commission decided to print 187 million ballot papers for the presidential elections due to short notice and logistics issues.
18 political parties will participate in the 2023 general election, and the law outlines how candidates and a presidential candidate will emerge.
Because of limited time on the Commission and the law, if a candidate doesn’t win on the first ballot, the Commission prints run-off ballots (second election) when printing main election ballots.
“If 93million Nigerians are on the presidential ballot, we will print 93million ballots for the first election and 93million ballots for the run-off election if no winner emerges from the first ballot.
When election petitions are discarded, the Commission will destroy the 93 million runoff ballots. The law gives the Commission just 21 days to conduct a runoff election if there is no winner.
As of the Presidential election, governorship and State Assembly elections were still pending. The Commission will print run-off ballots for four governorship elections in case a winner doesn’t emerge in the first ballot in some federation states.