By Our Correspondent
Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), will soon serve the 92 political parties in the country notice with a view to conducting another round of verification as part of the process for an impending de-registration of defaulting parties, according to Newsdiaryonline sources.
The well-placed source also revealed that the commission is outraged by the “arrogance of some parties’ refusal to be verified during the last exercise in December 2019,’’ saying that instead of subjecting themselves to verification, the parties stated that they were not ready but will ‘‘notify INEC when they are ready to be verified.’’
In this vein, the insider said the electoral referee has resolved to wield the big stick on any defaulting party.
Although, a date has not been fixed, ‘‘but judging from the outcomes of meeting to this effect, the next verification exercise to de-register unserious parties is just around the corner,’’ the source who does not want to be named in this report told Newsdiaryonline in Abuja on Wednesday.
The source also said experiences from last year’s verification exercise conducted by the commission’s Election and Party Monitoring (EPM), department personnel, indicated a proliferation of parties registered by their promoters ‘‘just for personal aggrandizements.’’
As such, the source said ‘‘after the upcoming verification, I can assure you that many parties will go,’’ adding that ‘‘there is no doubt about it.’’
Newsdiaryonline recalls that INEC criteria for assessing parties during the verification exercise conducted in December last year include: evidence of headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, five copies of the constitution of the party, list of NWC members, then membership register, as well as book of account, presence of offices for NWC members and evidence of offices in two-third of the 36 states of Nigeria.
Section 225 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, empowers the commission to de-register political parties on grounds of: (b) failure to win at least 25 percent of votes cast in – (i.) one state of the federation in a presidential election; or (ii.) one local government of the state in a governorship election; (c.) failure to win at least – (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.
Besides, Section 78 (7) (i) and (ii) of the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) empowers INEC to deregister any political party that: (i.) has breached any of the requirements for registration; and (ii.) has failed to win a seat in the National or State Assembly election.
However, parties under their umbrella body IPAC as part of their survival game argue that INEC cannot de-register parties until all the Local Government elections have been conducted by the State Independent Electoral Commission. But, this time around the commission according to Newsdiaryonline source ‘‘will rather do the needful to bring sanity to the country’s democratic system by de-registering defaulting parties.’’ How it will play out remains to be seen.
