Our Priority Is For Candidates To Complete, Upload Nomination Forms On INEC’s Portal – APC

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said its priority now is to have all its candidates submit their Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) nomination forms and upload them on the electoral umpire’s platform.

APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, said this while speaking on concerns about the non-publication of the list of candidates who emerged from the ruling party’s recently held primaries.

LEADERSHIP reports that APC commenced the submission of its candidates’ names to INEC for the 2027 general election.

INEC told our correspondent that it had granted access codes to nine political parties to enable them to upload the names of their candidates for the 2027 general elections.

LEADERSHIP gathered that the parties include the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), among others.

This is just as the ruling party, over the weekend, said it has not released the official list of successful candidates from its recently held party primaries.

APC, in a statement issued by Morka, advised the public to disregard any publication or report purporting to announce the outcome of the primaries, as such information is false and unauthorised.

The party, said successful candidates will be duly notified through its official channels, after which Certificates of Return will be issued in accordance with established procedures.

But responding to questions from some journalists on Tuesday, the APC spokesperson said the party’s focus had moved from the publication of the candidates’ list to the completion and submission of INEC’s nomination forms.

“The priority of the party now is to have all our candidates fill and complete their INEC nomination form and upload the same on the INEC platform.

“The successful people, I mean those who have emerged as the candidates of the party, are being provided with the relevant forms for documentation. They are to fill and return to the party for uploading to the INEC portal,” Morka said.

He emphasised that: “having a public release of the list is not our priority now. Though we shall share the list publicly, the priority right now is to ensure our candidates complete their forms and meet the INEC deadline.

“This is more important to us than the public release of the candidates’ list. Those who are our candidates have received their forms by now. They already know themselves. There is no tension about that.”

Morka disclosed that they received over 700 petitions from aggrieved contestants who felt shortchanged by the internal electoral processes across various constituencies.

The APC national publicity secretary said the party painstakingly looked into every grievance, a development that led to some changes in the candidates that hitherto emerged from the field.

“For those aggrieved, we took our time to undertake a very thorough review of all the petitions that came after the primaries. Over 700 petitions were received and properly vetted.

“Some were successful, and some were not. Those successes led to some corrections in some constituencies. Those who were not successful were not retained; those who were earlier declared were. In a few cases, there were upsets based on the outcome of the petitions and decisions were made on them,” he said.

Morka indicated that the exercise was closed after the petitions had been considered.

“We have gone past that. So the people today filling the forms are those who emerged originally without challenge, and those who emerged from the appeal process. This is the final position of the review,” he said.

Morka noted that the party is activating internal mechanisms to assuage the concerns of aspirants who still feel aggrieved.

“The party’s internal conflict resolution mechanism is being deployed, and we are making tremendous progress,” the APC spokesperson added.