By MICHAEL CHAWE

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Lusaka,

Zambian President Edgar Lungu filed his nomination Monday seeking re-election after a court petition to block him failed.

His critics still argued he was not eligible to contest the election as that would amount to a “third term.”

The country’s Constitutional Court earlier ruled that he was eligible to run for president again.

Critics had argued that he became head of state following the death of President Michael Sata in the middle of his term in office.

President Sata died in 2014 after three years in power, which necessitated an election in which Lungu was voted in in 2015.

President Lungu has picked a 70-year-old university professor of microbiology, Nkandu Luo, as his running mate.

He dismissed those who criticised his choice of running mate.

Prof Luo, a northerner, started as a junior minister soon after Zambia reverted to multiparty politics in 1991 and rose through ranks. She, however, left the Movement for Multiparty Democracy to join the current governing party Patriotic Front in mid-2000.

Incumbent Vice President Inonge Wina, 80, told reporters she had excused herself from being a running mate on account of her age and had asked the president not to consider her for the job.

Zambia goes to the polls on August 12, 2021.