Despite the APC’s claim of meeting INEC’s July 11 deadline for uploading National Assembly candidates, multiple sources at the commission have revealed that no political party, including the ruling party, actually met the original deadline before it was extended to July 14.
ABUJA — Despite repeated claims by some leading political parties in the country that they beat the July 11 deadline for uploading their National Assembly candidates into a dedicated portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Vanguard checks have revealed the contrary.
According to Vanguard, multiple sources at INEC have disclosed that no political party, including the All Progressives Congress (APC), met the commission’s original July 11 deadline for the submission of candidates’ names for the 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections, contradicting the ruling party’s claim that it had successfully complied.
“As of July 11 deadline, before the extension to July 14, over 70 per cent of candidates in the APC had not been uploaded by the party. No party met that deadline. The commission had to bend backwards to accommodate them. In fact, the commission opened its back-end to be able to do that,” the source said.
The disclosure came despite a statement issued on July 12 by the APC, which said it successfully met INEC’s deadline, describing it as an achievement made possible despite the large number of party candidates contesting on its platform.
The party had noted that at the request of opposition political parties that had failed to meet the July 11 deadline, INEC granted an extension to July 14, 2026.
In a statement issued by INEC National Commissioner, Mohammed Kudu Haruna, the commission confirmed the deadline had been extended following an appeal by the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) on behalf of parties unable to upload their candidates’ particulars within the scheduled timeline.
APC spokesman, Felix Morka, had argued that the extension was necessitated by opposition parties’ failure to manage their internal processes despite having fewer candidates than the APC. “This development provides yet another clear indication of the opposition’s chronic inherent weakness,” Morka said, describing as ironical the opposition’s simultaneous accusations that APC controls INEC while relying on the same commission for relief.
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