Nairobi- Kenya’s election commission on Monday set October 17 as the date for a new vote ordered by the Supreme Court when it canceled the results of an August poll won by President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Kenyatta won the August 8 vote by 1.4 million votes. The court on Friday said the election commission had not followed proper procedures and ordered it to hold a new vote within 60 days.

It was the first time in the African continent a Supreme Court has invalidated the results of presidential elections.

“A new presidential election will be held on October 17, based on a Supreme Court decision that annulled the August 8 presidential election,” the electoral commission said in a statement.

The statement added that the election would feature Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who filed a complaint with the Supreme Court.

October’s elections will see competition between only two candidates, Kenyatta, 55, who achieved victory in August with 54.27 percent of votes, and main opposition Odinga, 72, who won 44.74 percent of votes.

The other six candidates, who received less than one per cent of votes, will not be entitled to participate in the elections.

While Kenyatta pledged to lead a strong campaign to win the new elections, Odinga called for the election commission to be replaced and brought to trial, in light of the Supreme Court ruling.

Uganda, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone are other countries on the African continent where presidential elections have been challenged in courts of law but have not been nullified.