With barely 21 days left before the statutory deadline for the release of election funds, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has yet to receive money earmarked for the conduct of the 2027 general elections. The concerns over funding are unfolding against the backdrop of INEC’s proposal of N873 billion for the conduct of the 2027 elections.
The development comes as the electoral umpire also revealed plans to conduct mock presidential election exercises to test its technology infrastructure ahead of the 2027 elections, while assuring Nigerians that the controversial glitches that affected the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal during the 2023 presidential election would not be repeated.
But as the electoral umpire struggles with its preparations for the general elections holding in January and February, all eyes are on INEC as it releases the official access codes to political parties today to enable them to upload their nominated candidates to the commission’s portal. The move is expected to end concerns over delays by political parties in making public the names of candidates for various elective positions.
As a result, the issue of choice of running mates has continued to agitate the candidates of the front row contending parties. Apart from the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, whose choice of the former Kano State governor, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, predated his emergence as the party’s standard bearer, uncertainty trails the choice of other flag-bearers.
Also of interest are parties whose leadership are still a subject of litigation in the courts, as only the faction recognised by INEC would be given the access codes. Already, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, had earlier this week dared the Tanimu Turaki faction of the party that June 26 would determine the authentic PDP faction.
The Turaki-led Interim National Working Committee had said INEC on Wednesday validated all the candidates contesting elections on its platform, but Wike, who spoke at the NEC meeting, dared the Turaki group, saying, “June 26 is around the corner. Let’s see who INEC will give the access code to upload their nominated candidates. Some of you picked forms from the wrong place. This is the authentic place to pick from. Let’s see what happens on June 26,” he said.
Speaking on preparations for the 2027 elections, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Haruna, raised grave concerns yesterday during a closed-door fireside chat with select journalists organised by the Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA) in partnership with Legis360 in Abuja.
Section 3(3) of the Electoral Act, 2026, provides that election funds due to the commission for any general election shall be released “not later than six months before the next general election.” With the presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for January 16, 2027, the six-month deadline falls on July 16, 2026, leaving only 21 days before the legal threshold is reached.
Although the statutory timeline has not yet been breached, Haruna warned that waiting until the last permissible day could significantly constrain preparations for an election expected to be one of the most complex and expensive in Nigeria’s history.
According to the INEC commissioner, INEC is already under pressure to commence procurement and replacement of critical election materials, many of which require long manufacturing and delivery timelines. He explained that election materials such as ballot boxes, voting cubicles, ballot papers and technology infrastructure are not items that can simply be purchased off the shelf.
Haruna disclosed that INEC has already begun discussions around the procurement of new Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices, noting that some of the machines used during previous elections were either damaged, lost or could not be recovered.
“Our Director of ICT just came back from China regarding procurement because not all the BVAS devices used during the last general election were recovered. Orders need to be placed and these things take time,” he said.
Indeed, while the Electoral Act permits election funds to be released as late as six months before polling day, election managers argue that modern elections require significantly longer planning horizons, particularly in a country with over 176,000 polling units and one of the world’s largest electorates.
Nevertheless, the concern echoes arrangements made ahead of the 2023 elections when election funding was made available much earlier, enabling the commission to commence procurement and planning well ahead of schedule.
The commission had, in February, informed the National Assembly that the N873 billion proposed expenditure would cover election operations, administrative costs, election technology, capital projects and other miscellaneous requirements associated with organising nationwide polls.
But Haruna argued that public discussions often focus on the headline figure without considering the realities of election administration.
“This N800 billion-plus sounds humongous, but when you calculate the average cost per voter, it is about six dollars per voter, which is reasonable for a country like Nigeria. People forget that virtually everything we use is imported. The BVAS devices are imported. A lot of election materials are imported. Exchange rate fluctuations also affect costs,” he said.
Reacting, Executive Director of PAACA, Ezenwa Nwagwu, warned that the delayed release of election funds could create avoidable crises that can undermine electoral integrity. According to him, late funding often encourages emergency decision-making and weakens compliance with established procedures.
Haruna, while also acknowledging the persistence of public concerns arising from the 2023 presidential election, particularly the technical difficulties that affected the uploading of results to the IReV portal, insisted that the commission has learned important lessons and is determined to avoid a recurrence. He revealed that INEC is considering conducting mock presidential election exercises before the 2027 polls, specifically to stress-test its systems under conditions that mirror nationwide voting.
He noted that the challenge experienced during the presidential poll differed from other elections because of the sheer volume of data and simultaneous transmissions involved.
Another issue highlighted by the commissioner was what he described as growing judicial interference in election administration through conflicting court orders and last-minute judgments.
According to Haruna, INEC has become increasingly concerned about judicial decisions that alter election arrangements shortly before polls, forcing the commission to make emergency adjustments to logistics, technology and ballot design. To address the challenge, he disclosed that INEC has scheduled consultations with judicial authorities, beginning with the Supreme Court.
Haruna cited situations where court orders compelled the commission to alter ballot configurations close to election day, creating significant operational complications. He argued that election management involves extensive planning, procurement and system configuration processes that require certainty and predictability.
By the vote tally of the 2023 presidential election, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), which has the incumbent, President Bola Tinubu, as its defending champion for the 2027 poll, trailed by the PDP, the Labour Party (LP), the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
However, in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election, virtually all the presidential contenders who participated in the 2023 ballot, except President Tinubu and Adebayo Adewole of the SDP, have changed platforms.
APC/Tinubu: Second-guessing Shettima
THE ruling party has remained mute over whether President Tinubu will retain his vice, Senator Kashim Shettima, as his running mate for the 2027 presidential race, especially after the argument led to the removal of the party’s former national chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, last year.
Ganduje’s offence was the North East consultative meeting debacle, where stakeholders were mobilised to Gombe State to endorse President Tinubu’s second term. Stakeholders from Shettima’s home state of Borno protested on the fateful June 15, 2025, when the then zonal chairman, Mustapha Saliu, mounted the rostrum and announced the endorsement of Tinubu, without including the name of the Vice President.
Although the Deputy National Chairman (North), Bukar Dalori, tried to correct the mistake by endorsing both Tinubu and Shettima for a joint presidential return ticket, the boos and fisticuffs that ensued led the Borno delegates to believe that the cat had been let out of the bag of the clandestine plot to substitute the former Borno State governor, Shettima.
However, matters took a turn for the worse when the United States Senate passed a motion in which Nigeria was designated as a Country of Particular Concern for religious intolerance. The US lawmakers pointed to the same faith ticket by Tinubu and Shettima as evidence of persecution of Christians in the country.
Further, as the U.S. President, Donald Trump, declared the intention to protect Christians in Nigeria, words started making the rounds afresh that the former Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, was being considered to take Shettima’s place as President Tinubu’s running mate to achieve religious balance on the APC ticket.
The subsequent appointment of Musa as Defence Minister, from the North-West state of Kaduna, provided added flesh of authenticity to his speculated possible nomination as Presidential running mate, just as insiders in the Tinubu Presidency explained that the former CDS was being brought in to be groomed in the ways of politics and governance as a Minister.
Until the names are uploaded and the window of substitution closes, only President Tinubu and a few insiders know who would ultimately deputise him on the APC ballot.
ADC/Atiku: Amaechi’s odd choice
THE ADC is saddled with a lot of challenges, ranging from leadership disputes and parallel structures. The faction loyal to Gombe has nominated Anambra’s self-acclaimed political godfather, Chris Uba, as its presidential candidate, while the faction loyal to the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Dumebi Kachikwu, has retained him as presidential contender.
While the various litigations challenging Senator David Mark-led National Working Committee (NWC) are still at trial and appellate levels, the Mark leadership held the party’s Presidential primary, which threw up the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, as winner amidst complaints from his rivals.
In a bid to contain the grievances by the two other ADC presidential aspirants, including the former Transportation Minister, Barrister Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and Banker, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, the stakeholders of the party prevailed on Amaechi to accept the position of running mate despite his initial objections to be a presidential sparring partner.
To ensure that he was not rendered redundant in the scheme of things, Amaechi, who also contested the APC presidential ticket against Tinubu, churned out some conditionalities to guarantee his acceptance as the vice-presidential runner.
Affronted by what Atiku’s inner men called cheekiness, they (Atiku’s supporters) started flying the kite of a possible substitution of Amaechi on the presidential ballot. To checkmate that move, Amaechi’s supporters convinced him to proceed with a court case against the ADC presidential primary if by June 27, his name was not uploaded on the INEC portal.
Issues in running mate selection
FOR long, the issue of how governorship and presidential running mates should be selected has always been a bone of contention during elections. In 2023, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s failure to nominate the first runner-up in the PDP presidential primary as consolation led to the recriminations that factionalised the party, culminating in another damning defeat by the APC.
Sometimes religion and zonal balances dictate who and from where a running should be sourced for the flagbearer. At any event, a key consideration is always the electoral weight of the possible candidate as well as other factors of funding capacity, easy name and face recognition.
In an interview, PDP Governorship candidate for Adamawa, Dr Maurice Vunobolki, who is yet to select his own running mate, said that in the search for his deputy, “it is very important that my running mate should be transparent, must have a good pedigree, must be energetic, must be well educated and exposed, someone that is reliable, that we can rely on, and also has the acceptability of people.”
He stated that it was not his sole choice, but that the stakeholders of the party must be involved in selecting a running mate, even as he maintained that his input is also necessary to “an extent that the running mate must also come in with quite a lot of transparency, pedigree, experience and exposure.”
His words: “Well, I know that it is the duty of the flag bearer to get his running mate, but then, party structures are involved in getting running mates. Now, because you can’t just go and say I’m going to pick someone who has no input in what the political fortunes are going to be like. So, you must be involved in the choice of a running mate, but the party structures are very important in doing that.
“In all, I think usually they have pencilled like three different nominees, and then, based on what I’ve mentioned now, the criteria I gave out, we’re able to take a running mate that is on the ground as well. We haven’t yet, but we have identified some people, but not a particular individual. We have like about five of them that are very good, that have the pedigree, experience, exposure that will fit into that office, but the stakeholders will have the final say out of these five.”
Anxiety, power play over Ondo APC primaries fallout
IN Ondo state, anxiety has gripped aspirants who contested the Senate and House of Representatives tickets as the party moves to upload the list of candidates on the portal today. With most of the aspirants’ fate still in the dark over the unresolved outcomes of the party’s primaries held last month, the various political camps in the state have expressed optimism and hope that their candidates will emerge as the winners.
With the portal access imminent, the APC is yet to officially release a definitive list of its standard-bearers for the nine House of Representatives constituencies and three senatorial districts in the state, despite conducting the primaries on May 16 and May 18, 2026.
The delays have been attributed to internal disputes, petitions from aggrieved aspirants, and crises that rocked some parts of the states during the primaries, which were accompanied by allegations and counter-allegations.
Party sources disclosed that there have been underground moves to ensure that the consensus candidates allegedly favoured by Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa make the list, but some other camps are also in a power play to emerge victorious.
Compounding the uncertainty, the party had earlier disqualified some aspirants from the House of Representatives race, particularly those purportedly linked to the governor’s preferred consensus candidates. Despite their disqualification, some of the aspirants were said to have been present at the collation centres, expecting to be declared winners.
The crisis has created a chaotic scenario where multiple aspirants across various constituencies are independently laying claim to the party’s tickets, with incumbent lawmakers and governor-backed candidates locked in fierce cold battles over who truly won the primaries.
Guardian