The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced the date for the conduct of 2019 Presidential and National Assembly assembly elections.
According to the timetable released by the commission, Nigerians are expected to elect the president on February 16, 2019.
Also scheduled for the same day is the election into the Senate and the House of Representatives.
News of the election dates was broken by INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, at an induction retreat for Resident Electoral Commissioners in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
The Governorship, State Assembly and Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory will follow on 2nd March 2019,” Yakubu said.
The implementation of the 2019 Election Project Plan is to begin on January 1, 2018.
He said an additional 3,630,529 voters were registered in the recent continuous registration.
“This is an important development in our efforts to ensure that electoral services offered to Nigerians are better, more frequent and easier to access than ever before,” he said.
This exercise will continue until 60 days to the 2019 General Elections, as a provided by the Electoral act.
The INEC Chairman said the commission was “working assiduously to ensure 100% performance of the Card Readers. That is why there is an ongoing pilot to upgrade it by enhancing its features including new superior processors.”
He added: “At the same time, the Commission is exploring ways of improving the integrity of the collation and results transmission processes and has begun to deploy the electronic result collation and transmission platform on a pilot basis.
“Our ultimate aim, learning from the pilot and consequential improvement of the supporting infrastructure, is to deploy the system for all forthcoming off-season elections and, ultimately, the 2019 General Elections. The Commission is working to ensure that this goal is achieved.”
The commission said it has conducted 175 elections across the country in the last two years.
These include 79 Court-ordered re-run elections, 73 end of tenure elections and 23 bye-elections.
Yakubu said that even where electoral tribunals overturned two of the elections conducted, the commission was never asked to do a fresh election.
He also noted that to the credit of the commission, outcomes of most recent elections were not challenged in court.
