Parties in last minute rush to submit candidates' list as APC, PDP, APDA, Accord beat deadline

As the Independent National Electoral Commission's, INEC, deadline for the submission of the lists of their candidates for the 2019 presidential and National Assembly elections expires yesterday, majority of the registered political parties resulted to last minute rush to ensure that they were not shut out of the exercise.

Most of the parties had to rush to the Aso hall of the International Conference of Centre, Abuja, venue of the exercise to obtain tallies and returned to put their papers in order for submission.

As at 5.45pm yesterday, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, the leading opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the Advance Peoples' Democratic Alliance, APDA, and Accord had submitted their lists to INEC.

APDA submitted its list through its National Chairman, Mohammed Kabiru Shittu , while Accord did same it National Chairman, Hon Muhammad Nalado.

The PDP was given tally number 12 by security officials at the venue of the submission of lists of candidates for presidential and National Assembly elections, while the Zenith Labour Party, ZLP, got tally number 73.

As at Tuesday this week, only eight political parties out of the eighty-nine parties that indicated interest in contesting the elections had so far submitted the list of their candidates.

The number of parties that have submitted the list of their candidates however increased to twenty-seven on Wednesday

As at 6pm yesterday, it was not clear how many parties had submitted the lists of their candidates as many of them were waiting patiently to be attended to by the INEC officials. Some of the parties were seeing collating and arranging lists of their candidates using torch lights.

Reliable sources at the venue of the exercise confirmed that the exercise will end by 12 midnight yesterday.

The Zenith Labour Party, ZLP, team to venue of the submission was made up of its presidential candidate and former governor of Ondo state, Dr Abdulrahman Olusegun Mimiko and National Chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu among others.

In a brief chat with journalists at the venue, Mimiko cautioned INEC on the dangers bending the rules that have been set and thus advised the electoral umpire to be transparent in the conduct of 2019 general elections, saying transparency is hallmark of democracy.

He also explained that his decision to defect from the Labour Party, the platform under which he first emerged as presidential candidate to the ZLP was as a result of legal tussles.

The APDA Chairman explained that the delay in the submission of the party's candidates was as a result of the need to settle all the various crises that arose after its primaries.