Sixteen governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) seeking a second-term mandate will be given priority as the party commences the digital upload of all its governorship and State Houses of Assembly candidates on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Candidate Nomination Portal (ICNP).

They include Governors Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom), Hyacinth Alia (Benue), Uba Sani (Kaduna), and Abba Yusuf (Kano).

Other governors are Dikko Radda (Katsina), Nasir Idris (Kebbi), Umaru Bago (Niger), Caleb Mutfwang (Plateau), Ahmad Aliyu (Sokoto), Agbu Kefas (Taraba) and Dauda Lawal (Zamfara).

Also expected to make the party’s governorship list are 12 first-time governorship flagbearers, including Obafemi Hamzat (Lagos), Solomon Adeola (Ogun), Ogundu Kingsley Chinda (Rivers), Eric Opah (Abia), Mohammed Abubakar (Bauchi), Mustapha Gubio (Borno), Jamilu Gwamna (Gombe), Ahmed Aliyu Wadada (Nasarawa) and Baba Malam Wali (Yobe).

The move is part of the party’s race against time to meet statutory deadlines ahead of the 2027 general elections.

An investigation by The Nation at the APC National Headquarters in Abuja revealed that the party’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) department began processing the documents on Saturday.

The massive data entry operation covers 28 governorship candidates and 993 State Houses of Assembly candidates across the federation.

Governorship elections will not be held in eight states—Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Ondo, and Osun—due to their off-cycle electoral calendars. The party had previously uploaded its presidential and 469 National Assembly candidates.

To ensure a glitch-free process, the APC leadership established a dedicated vetting committee.

“The party has set up a special committee headed by Hon. Jibrin Bancir, the Principal Private Secretary to the APC National Chairman,” an impeccable source within the National Working Committee (NWC) told The Nation.

“The committee is saddled with the responsibility of collecting and verifying all nomination forms from State Chairmen before handing them over to the ICT unit. We are leaving nothing to chance ahead of the August 8 deadline for the closure of the INEC portal.”

The stringent provisions of the Electoral Act, 2026. Under Section 29(1) of the Act, political parties are mandated to submit the list of candidates they propose to sponsor, along with specific affidavits and statutory declarations (Forms EC9 and EC9A to EC9E), within a timeline strictly regulated by the commission.

Unlike past electoral regimes where physical documents allowed for last-minute adjustments, the 2026 legal framework heavily penalises late submissions or arbitrary changes once the portal slams shut.

INEC opened the ICNP platform at 9:00 a.m. on July 18 and is scheduled to close it automatically at 6:00 p.m. on August 8, 2026, for the uploading of governorship and State Houses of Assembly results.

Under the current law, the digital window is absolute, leaving no room for manual interventions after the deadline.

The Nation, however, gathered that the final list of State Assembly candidates remains fluid. The party is poised to drop and replace several names following the recommendations of its Primary Elections Appeal Committee, which overturned some initial results.

Earlier, APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, hinted that the sheer volume of internal disputes necessitated a thorough review.

According to Morka, “The party received over 700 petitions following the shadow elections held in May. The outcome of the primary appeal committee reports is being closely studied, and its implementation may necessitate the dropping and replacement of some names to ensure justice and party cohesion before the INEC deadline.”

With less than three weeks left before the August 8 cut-off, the APC ICT department is reportedly working in shifts to ensure all verified data hits the INEC server without legal or technical hitches. (The Nation)

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