PDP, APC presidential primaries: How delegates emerge for the parties national conventions

With less than one year to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, political parties need to decide who will fly their flags next year.

In line with the Electoral Act 2022, the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) – the election umpire has rolled out guidelines for the conduct of the process.

The commission has also directed all political parties to present a presidential candidate by the end of June this year and to obey the guidelines especially the smooth conduct of their primaries.

While 14 aspirants are hoping to be candidate of the PDP, the ruling APC has up to 23 aspirants that are running to be president.

The new Electoral Act allow political parties to adopt one of direct, indirect and consensus mode of primaries. Experts including Inec advises parties to adopt consensus mode to avoid troubles that are usually associated with indirect primaries.

“Direct primaries don’t make sense at all. It gives chance for electoral fraud to happen,” Tuduru Edeh a Senior advocate of Nigeria told BBC Pidgin.

He says “that is when governors and political leaders do pad the list with unknown names. Direct primaries always give rise to too many legal troubles.”

However, the two main parties have decided to use an indirect primary which will allow delegates to vote at primaries.

What is delegates election?

There are two types of delegates that vote in Nigerian primary elections — ad hoc and statutory delegates.

Ad hoc delegates are delegates that were elected through congresses at ward level across the country while statutory delegates — also known as automatic delegates — are those party members that are in office or have held public office before.

The delegates decide the fates of aspirants, they choose who will contest as president under each party.

The PDP in a statement they released as part of their guidelines for the primaries says “By Section 84(8) of the Electoral Act, 2022, delegate that will vote in the Indirect Primaries and National Convention of the political party to elect candidates for elections will be those democratically elected for that purpose only. Meaning only ad hoc delegates will participate.

“Consequently, those qualified and eligible to vote as delegates in the forthcoming Primaries and National Convention of our great Party, PDP are the three (3) AD-HOC Delegates per ward, which were elected at the Ward Congresses and one (1) National Delegate per Local Government elected at the Local Government Area Congresses.”

Breakdown of APC, PDP delegates

The ruling APC has decided to use 2,340 ad-hoc delegates which will comprise three delegates from each of the 774 local government areas and six area councils of the Federal capital territory.

According to the just-concluded congresses of the APC, this is the zonal breakdown of their ad-hoc delegates;

South-West: Lagos – 60, Ekiti – 48, Ogun – 60, Osun – 90, Oyo – 99, Ondo – 54, Total – 411.

South-South: Akwa Ibom – 93, Bayelsa – 24 Cross River: 54, Delta – 75, Edo – 54, Rivers – 69, Total – 369.

South-East: Abia – 54, Anambra – 63, Enugu – 51, Ebonyi – 39, Imo – 81, Total – 288.

North-East: Adamawa – 63, Bauchi – 60, Gombe – 33, Borno – 81, Yobe – 51, Taraba – 48, Total – 336.

North-Central: Kogi – 63, Kwara – 48, Benue – 69, Plateau – 51, Nasarawa – 39, Niger – 75, FCT, Abuja – 18, Total – 363

North-West: Kaduna – 69, Kano – 132, Katsina – 102, Kebbi – 63, Jigawa – 81, Sokoto – 69, Zamfara – 42, Total – 558.

On the other hand, the main opposition PDP settled for 810 delegates. One delegate from each of the 774 local government areas of the country and one state delegate from each state of the federation. that is 774 plus 36 to make them 810.