INEC's final lists name 4,863 National Assembly candidates. The widely reported 4,408 matches them only once the ADC's 454 are taken out

The Independent National Electoral Commission's final lists of candidates for the National Assembly elections of 16 January 2027 name 1,303 people for the Senate and 3,560 for the House of Representatives: 4,863 candidates in all. The total reported widely since 13 September, and attributed to the same lists, is 4,408. Vero Record downloaded both lists from the commission's website and counted every row. The difference is 455. The African Democratic Congress, the party of the Atiku Abubakar and Rotimi Amaechi presidential ticket, has 454 candidates on the two lists.

The documents are headed "Presidential and National Assembly Elections for Jan, 2027 - Senatorial District" and "Presidential and National Assembly Elections for Jan, 2027 - House of Representatives", each with the title "Final List of Candidates". The Senate list runs to 127 pages and the House list to 300. Every page carries the signature of Rose Oriaran-Anthony, Secretary of the Commission. Each row gives a serial number, state, constituency, name, party, disability status, age, gender and qualifications. The serial numbers start again at 1 in each state. In both documents they run without a gap, and the last numbers for the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory add up to 1,303 and 3,560. Two separate table-reading programs returned the same totals and the same counts by party and gender.

The rows cover all 109 Senate districts and all 360 House constituencies, and all 22 registered parties appear on each list. Kano has the most candidates in both chambers: 48 for its three Senate seats and 251 for its 24 House seats. The largest single field is in Municipal/Bwari, in the Federal Capital Territory, with 21 House candidates; the smallest is Ijero/Ekiti West/Efon in Ekiti, with three.

The figure of 4,408 appeared on 13 September in reports by Sahara Reporters, which said it came from "an analysis of the candidate documents published by the electoral commission", and by Nigeria Info. Leadership repeated it, and on 15 September The Sun said the numbers were "contained in the final National Assembly candidates' list released by the Independent National Electoral Commission". The reports give 1,195 Senate candidates, 1,080 men and 115 women, and 3,213 House candidates, 2,885 men and 328 women: 443 women in all.

Those numbers can be rebuilt from INEC's lists in one way. Take out the ADC's 108 Senate candidates, eight of them women, and 1,303 minus 108 leaves 1,195 candidates, while 123 minus 8 leaves 115 women: both published Senate figures, exactly. Take out its 346 House candidates, 18 of them women, and 3,560 minus 346 leaves 3,214, while 346 minus 18 leaves 328 women: the published number of women exactly, and a total one higher than the 3,213 reported. That one House candidate is the only part of the gap we cannot account for.

The ADC is not a marginal entry. INEC's final presidential list, which Vero Record has also read, gives entry 5 to "ABUBAKAR ATIKU", with "AMAECHI CHIBUIKE ROTIMI" as running mate, for the ADC. On the National Assembly lists the party has a candidate in 108 of the 109 Senate districts and in 346 of the 360 House constituencies, more seats than any party except the All Progressives Congress.

One of the press reports shows the problem in its own text. The Sun's headline reads "Female participation low as Natasha, Ireti, 441 others appear in INEC's 4,408 NASS candidates list", and the report names among the women "Senator Ireti Kingibe, whose names feature on the INEC list". INEC's Senate list does carry "IRETI HEEBAH KINGIBE", 72, female, as entry 6 for the Federal Capital Territory, and the party printed beside her name is the ADC. On the arithmetic above, the count of 443 women matches the lists without the ADC, and so without her.

We could not establish how the ADC rows came to be left out of the published count, and the lists do not say. Their internal file data record that both were created on 11 September 2026 and last modified on 12 September, at 10:53 and 11:21 UTC, before the first reports of 4,408 appeared. The copies we downloaded on 30 September and again on 3 October are identical, byte for byte. The Internet Archive holds no capture of either file, so we cannot see whether an earlier version without the ADC was ever online. Other counts made at the time agree with ours: Vanguard reported on 13 September that women were 123 of 1,303 Senate candidates, and the National Assembly Library Trust Fund put the number of women contesting Senate seats at 123 on 16 September.

The difference matters most for the count of women. On INEC's lists, 469 of the 4,863 candidates are women, 9.64 per cent: 123 of 1,303 for the Senate, 9.44 per cent, and 346 of 3,560 for the House, 9.72 per cent. The published 443 of 4,408 is 10.05 per cent. Putting the ADC back lowers the share because the ADC's own share is lower than the field's: 26 women among its 454 candidates, 5.73 per cent.

The same measure applies to every party. Among those with the most candidates, the APC has 33 women among 469, 7.04 per cent, four for the Senate and 29 for the House. The Peoples Democratic Party has 30 of 417, 7.19 per cent; the Nigeria Democratic Congress 25 of 429, 5.83 per cent; the Allied Peoples Movement 53 of 416, 12.74 per cent, the largest number of women of any party; the Labour Party 29 of 238, 12.18 per cent. The Peoples Redemption Party has no woman among its 27 Senate candidates and one among its 100 House candidates.

Only the APC has a candidate for every one of the 469 seats. The ADC has none in Delta South senatorial district, where the list carries 13 candidates from other parties, and none in 14 House constituencies, six of them in Kano. The PDP has no candidate in eight Senate districts and 44 House constituencies; the NDC in 10 and 30; the APM in five and 48. Thirty-six of the 109 Senate districts and 160 of the 360 House constituencies have no woman candidate. In Jigawa, Nasarawa, Niger and Yobe no woman is standing for the Senate.

The lists also carry keying errors that do not change the totals. Entry 112 for Oyo State, the PDP candidate in Oluyole, gives his age as 947. The spelling of the same constituency varies from row to row, and a faint "INEC" watermark across each page adds stray letters when the text is read by machine, which is why we checked our counts against the serial numbers and with a second program.

What the lists record is the field as INEC published it on 12 September. They do not settle who will finally be on the ballot on 16 January, since withdrawals, substitutions and court orders can still change it. And they cannot show whether INEC itself ever gave the figure of 4,408; we found no commission statement that does.

What this rests on

Two INEC documents downloaded from inecnigeria.org on 3 October 2026 (identical to copies downloaded on 30 September) and read in full: the Final List of Candidates, Presidential and National Assembly Elections for Jan, 2027 - Senatorial District (127 pages), and the Final List of Candidates, Presidential and National Assembly Elections for Jan, 2027 - House of Representatives (300 pages), both signed by Rose Oriaran-Anthony, Secretary of the Commission; and INEC's three-page final presidential list for entry 5. Every row was extracted with two separate table readers (PyMuPDF and pdfplumber), which gave identical totals; serial numbers were checked to run without gaps in every state. Arithmetic re-done: 1,303 + 3,560 = 4,863; 4,863 - 4,408 = 455; ADC 108 + 346 = 454; 1,303 - 108 = 1,195; 123 - 8 = 115; 3,560 - 346 = 3,214 (published 3,213); 346 - 18 = 328; 1,195 + 3,213 = 4,408; 115 + 328 = 443; 123 + 346 = 469; 469 / 4,863 = 9.64 per cent; 443 / 4,408 = 10.05 per cent; 26 / 454 = 5.73 per cent. The press figures are quoted from Sahara Reporters, Nigeria Info, Leadership and The Sun as context, not as the finding.

What this does not establish

Why the 4,408 count leaves out the ADC: we found no INEC statement giving 4,408, and no earlier version of the lists without the ADC (the Internet Archive has no capture of either file), so we cannot say whether the omission began with a document, a press release or an analyst's tally. The one House candidate by which the published 3,213 differs from the lists minus the ADC (3,214). Whether every candidate on the lists will appear on the ballot, since withdrawals, substitutions and court orders can still change the field. Party and gender counts are our own tallies of INEC's rows; the lists print no totals. Genders and ages are as INEC printed them; we did not check them against Form EC9 or other records.