If feelers from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is anything to go by, it is already getting ready for conducting a run-off of the February 25 presidential polls, where no candidate satisfies the conditional requirement to be declared a winner.
Mr. Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner and chairman, voter education committee, dropped the hint during a meeting with media chiefs on Friday in Abuja.
He said that INEC would print concurrently, ballot papers for the presidential election and those for a re-run exercise ahead of the 2023 election in case the situation arose.
The electoral body said the practice had been in existence since 1999 without public knowledge but was disclosed for the first time in line with the open policy of the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu.
Okoye said that INEC was already planning to print double of the total number of ballot papers required for the first ballot, should there be a rerun election, explaining that the preparations were always made alone the first because the commission had just 21 days to conduct the rerun or run-off election.
The national commissioner said that before a candidate could be declared winner of the presidential election, he or she must have the highest number of votes cast and secure a quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
