The Sierra Leone’s National Electoral Commission (NEC) has released campaign calendar and guidelines for the presidential run-off election scheduled for March 27.

NEC has announced a run-off in the country’s presidential election as no candidate scored the mandatory 55 per cent votes in the March 7 election which witnessed 84 per cent turn out.

The opposition candidate, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party (SLPP) led the final result with 1,097, 482 votes, making 43.3 per cent of the 2, 537,122 valid votes cast in the polls.

Samura Kamara of ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) came a close second with 1,082, 748 votes, representing 42.7 per cent of the total votes cast.

A statement issued by NEC in Freetown and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, noted that the two political parties and their candidates could campaign across the 16 Administrative districts of the country from March 15 to March 25.

According to the released guidelines each of the two parties would be granted exclusive permit on specific days in designated Districts to avoid clashes

As part of preparations for the run-off vote NEC is procuring new ballot papers bearing the photographs of the two candidates as against the previous design with 16 candidates.

The Commission is also expected to retrain polling officials and ready the electoral machinery for hitch-free voting.

The winner of the run off will replace out-going President Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC who has completed his constitutionally allowed two terms of five years each.