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General News of Saturday, 25 February 2023

Source: www.mynigeria.com

Heavy security presence at Nigeria's electoral body INEC

There is heavy security presence at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – the election supervising body of Nigeria.

According to thisdaylive.com, there are also police and military vehicles on patrol that are prompting motorists to divert to other routes causing gridlock in some parts of the country.

The Nigerian government has since closed its land borders on Friday ahead of the voting on Saturday.

On Saturday February 25, 2023, about 90 million Nigeria began to cast their ballots between 8:30 am and 2:30 pm.

INEC at a press briefing held on Friday, February 24 said voters in line to vote by the closing time will still be allowed to cast their ballots.

At the end of the exercise, ballots will be counted at polling units where valid votes will be transmitted electronically in real time to INEC’s Result Viewing portal.

This style of transmitting votes is the first of its kind to occur in Nigeria.

Rotimi Oyekanmi, a spokesman for INEC’s chairperson told reporters, “with the electronic transmission system (IREV), people will already know the winners before the official announcement is made.”

Meanwhile, the top three candidates contesting in the presidential elections are; Peter Obi of the Labour Party, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.

For a candidate to emerge as the winner in the presidential election, they must garner a sufficient number of ballots to meet the 25 percent vote spread in 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states.

Should this not be achieved by a candidate, a run-off election will be held among the two top candidates in about 21 days.