The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria has deregistered 78 political parties and retained only 16.
The Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, explained in Abuja on Thursday that the commission has similarly fixed the dates for the end-of-tenure Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo States as well as bye-elections to fill vacancies in some states of the federation.
He stated that as at the 2019 general election, Nigeria had 91 political parties and one more was registered through court order after the election, making a total of 92 political parties.
Local media reports on Friday said that Yakubu stated the 1999 constitution of Nigeria (as amended) vests in INEC the power to register and regulate the activities of political parties.
“You will also recall that in 2018, the Constitution was amended. In addition to the extant provision for the registration of political parties, the Fourth Alteration to the Constitution (Section 225A) empowers the Commission to deregister political parties,’’ he said.
According to him, the parties were delisted because they failed to win at least 25cpercent of the votes cast in one state of the federation in a presidential election or 25 percent of the votes cast in one local government area of a state in a governorship election.
The parties, he said, also failed to win at least one ward in a chairmanship election, one seat in the National or State Assembly election or one seat in a councillorship election.
“In order to implement the provision of the Fourth Alteration to the Constitution, the Commission carried out an assessment of the political parties to determine compliance with the requirements for their registration.
“Similarly, following the conclusion of the 2019 general election, including court-ordered re-run elections arising from litigations, the Commission was able to determine the performance of political parties in the elections.
“In addition, they were also assessed on the basis of their performance in the Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which coincided with the 2019 general election. It should be noted that the FCT is the only part of the country where INEC is empowered by the Constitution to conduct Local Government elections,’’ he added.
MM/GIK/APA