By EMMANUEL OLONIRUHA

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has commenced preparations for the conduct of by-elections to fill the vacant seats in the National and State Assemblies.

Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja, said that the commission would soon release more details about the by-elections.

“We have commenced preparations for the conduct of the by-elections. At our meetings with leaders of political parties and security agencies recently, we notified them of our preparations.

“The current national and state assemblies were inaugurated in June 2023.

“Between June and December 2023, a period of just six months, vacancies occurred in 23 constituencies as a result of death or resignation of legislators.

“In early 2024, the commission conducted nine by-elections. Since then, 16 other vacancies have occurred,’’ he said.

Oyekanmi said that the challenge with by-elections was that they were unpredictable, not budgetted for and also difficult to plan for in advance.

This, he said, was why INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, appealed to the national assembly recently to consider other viable alternatives to by-elections for filling vacancies in the national and state assemblies.

Oyekanmi said that the call was aimed at mitigating the high cost of conducting by-elections in the country.

He also said that INEC was working on resuming its nationwide continuous voter registration (CVR) and collection of permanent voter cards (PVCs).

“The resumption of CVR is top on the commission’s agenda. It is only a matter of time before the commission announces the date,” he said. (NAN)