Several weeks after winding up their primary elections, major political parties are yet to release concrete lists of candidates for the 2027 general elections, stoking anxiety among aspirants and raising concerns over transparency in the nomination process.

The parties affected are the All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), African Democratic Congress (ADC), Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Labour Party (LP).

The development is coming even as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had announced that it would issue official access codes to political parties for the Candidate Nomination Portal on June 26, 2026.

Many governorship, National Assembly and State Assembly aspirants were left in the dark about their political future as parties continued to hold back final nomination lists, findings reveal.

The delay has raised allegations of internal crisis and claims that some parties are deliberately delaying the publication to reduce chances for aggrieved aspirants to approach the court to challenge the outcome of the primaries.

The APC admitted that party members were increasingly worried about the delay.

Senate President, Godswill Akpabio had recently urged the party leadership to be careful in handling the release of the final list.

“The party is above all. “I’m just pleading with the party to please make sure when they release their final list, we are all in it. “I have some of my people with high blood pressure,” Akpabio said.

APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, when contacted, simply told THISDAY that the list would be released “soon.”

But party insiders said appeal committees were still reviewing complaints arising from the primaries.

As we are talking, the appeal committees are still sitting,” said a senior party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I doubt if the party will issue any list as it will create a lot of problems.”

Another party chieftain said the leadership was “managing” tensions well to prevent sabotage and protest votes by members ahead of the elections.

The NDC has defended its decision not to disclose the names of successful aspirants saying there is no law requiring parties to do so.

The National Publicity Secretary, Osa Director, said all the candidates that took part in the primaries had been notified of the results.

“The protocol does not include mandatory public reporting of results,” he said.

He said the party met all legal requirements and that INEC already has the records.

“Therefore, INEC already has a list of candidates as it is,” he said.

The June 26 deadline, he said, was only for the political parties to verify and upload their final nominations to the commission.

The faction of the PDP loyal to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, declared it was waiting for the ratification of its candidate lists by the party’s National Executive Committee.

National Publicity Secretary, Haruna Jungudo, said all nomination exercises and appeals had ended under the supervision of INEC.

““we have done all nomination exercises including the appeals by those aggrieved in the conduct of the exercise.

In this regard, INEC monitored our exercise, the primary nomination exercise and subsequent appeals.

“We are now waiting for the NEC meeting that is expected to be sooner to ratify the exercise. He said, “Only after the ratification by the NEC will we as a political party upload the outcome of the exercise to INEC.

The ADC also said it had conducted all its primary elections, but insisted that it was still within INEC’s timetable.

National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said, “We have carried out the primaries of all categories of the elections and the processes observed by INEC. “We are on INEC’s approved timetable, so I can say we are just waiting for our time.”

The Labour Party equally said it has ratified 1,211 candidates for various elective offices and would begin uploading their names on the INEC portal on June 28.

The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Ken Asogwa, said the nominations had been okayed by the National Executive Committee.