The Independent National Electoral Commission has said the next presidential election will hold on the second Saturday of February 2023.
The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, made the announcement in Abuja on Thursday at the inauguration of the Special Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution at the House of Representatives.
Yakubu said, “This is what happens in Ghana; every Ghanaian knows that every December 7 is Election Day. Every American knows that the first Tuesday of November of an election year is the Election Day. In Nigeria, it is the second Saturday of February in the election year. Therefore, when is the 2023 general election going to hold? It is the second Saturday of February of the election year. That means that from today till the 2023 presidential election, we have exactly 855 days. I am not reminding members of the National Assembly that their tenure will soon end. But the truth is that there has to be certainty of tenure. Between election and inauguration, there is time. So, between now and the next presidential election is 855 days, you have a very limited time for the Constitution amendment. There must be a way, either by way of an amendment to the legal framework or the Constitution, to effectively penalise electoral offenders in this country. You cannot have a flourishing democracy in which laws are violated with impunity and nothing happens. So, there must be a mechanism by which they should be discouraged.”