Less than 10 political parties
may survive being deregistered by the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) should the commission decide to run with the amended constitutional
provision to deregister parties.
At least, 70 parties participated
in the 2019 elections, an alteration on the 1999 constitution. However, section 225 of the constitution as amended
empowers INEC deregister political parties on grounds of:
“a. breach of any of the
requirements for registration
“b. failure to win at least
twenty-five percent of votes cast in-one State of the Federation in a
Presidential election; or one Local Government of the State
in a Governorship election;
“i. one ward in the Chairmanship
election
” ii. one seat in the National or
State House of Assembly election; or
“iii. one seat in the
Councillorship election.”
Checks by TheCable showed that
apart from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) that have won seats since
2015, Young Progressive Party (YPP), Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Action
Alliance (AA), Allied Peoples Movement (APM) and the Social Democratic Party
(SDP) are the only five other parties that may scale through the new
requirement.
YPP won a senatorial seat in
Anambra, PRP won two seats for house of representatives in Bauchi, AA also won
two seats for house of representatives in Imo, APM one house of representatives
seat in Ogun and SDP also got one seat for house of representatives in Ondo
state.
In a statement, Femi Falana, a
senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said it is clear that INEC has the power to
deregister political parties that fail to meet the fresh constitutional
prerequisites, and going by the results of the 2019 elections, the 91
registered political parties may have been reduced to less than 10 that may have
scaled the constitutional hurdle.
Falana further argued that
deregistration of political parties that fail to win elections is likely to
limit the political space to the “so-called mainstream parties” that are not
committed to any political philosophy or ideology.
He added that with respect to
registered political parties, INEC must fully comply with section 225(2) of the
constitution by sanctioning them if they fail to submit a detailed annual
statement and analysis of their sources of funds and assets, as this would go a
long way to check the monetisation and manipulation of the democratic process
by political godfathers.
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