Date: 2020-03-14

373 candidates to feature in Saturday's poll in Kwara INEC to conduct Kwara Assembly by-election March 14 APC floors PDP to win Kwara, Katsina by-elections APC, PDP, four others battle for Taraba Assembly seat Election: 41 candidates jostle for Borno governorship seat Ahead of the bye-election slated for today in Kwara State, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Attahiru Madami, has assured that the electoral commission, INEC, is prepared for the conduct of the poll.

According to Mr Madami, six political parties fielded candidates for the Patigi constituency election into the Kwara State House of Assembly.

The constituency's seat became vacant owing to the death of Said Rufai, who represented the constituency under the All Progressive Congress (APC) but died on December 3, 2019.

The electoral umpire, who spoke with journalists on Friday evening, listed the political parties that fielded candidates for the election as Alliance Action Congress, African Democratic Congress, All Progressives Congress, Allied Peoples Movement, Nigeria National Peoples Party and Peoples Democratic Party.

Mr Madami said the sensitive and non-sensitive materials were deployed for the election in time.

He added that 451 personnel would supervise the election which would be conducted in 105 polling units, while 43,695 people who collected their permanent voter cards would participate in the election.

Mr Madami also confirmed that the commission would deploy at least three-card reader machines to each polling unit to guide against any challenge.

He then urged all the participating political parties and their supporters to conduct themselves peacefully before, during and after the elections. He assured them of a fair and credible election.

It should be noted that there are 52,233 registered voters in Patigi state constituency, while 51,476 PVCs were received from INEC headquarters.

The REC had earlier disclosed that a total of 43,695 PVCs were collected, leaving 7,781 uncollected PVCs which he said were kept in the vault of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in Ilorin.