Deregister More Political Parties, APC Tells INEC

The All Progressives Congress has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to de-register more political parties to sanitise Nigeria’s electoral system.

The Chairman of Ebonyi Chapter of APC, Mr Nwachukwu Eze, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria on Monday in Abakaliki.

Eze said the de-registration process should continue until the country has a maximum of six political parties to ensure that the electoral space was not ‘unnecessarily congested’.

“We applaud INEC for doing the needful as such de-registration has been overdue.

“We had a situation where few individuals or family members put-up papers and register with INEC but do not exist in states or anywhere in the country.

“They do not have offices, membership bases, structures and one person in most cases, is the chairman, secretary and other members of the executive.

“INEC has presently decided to sanitise the system and this can be likened to the deleting of unwanted files in a computer for it to have enough storage space,” he said.

The chairman said such de-registration would sanitise the electoral process, especially by eliminating complexities recorded during voting.

“This decision will make logos of political parties appear bold on ballot papers and make voters have enough space to thumb-print.

“When we have over 90 political parties on a ballot paper, the illiterate voters would be confused on how to thumb-print,” he said.

He urged INEC not to be distracted by complaints about the de-registration, advising it to ‘shut its ears’.

“There is no case of victimisation in the decision as the affected parties know they are not in existence.

“A situation where some parties will poll over 10million votes in a general election, while others will not have up to 1, 000 votes in a country of over 120 million people is appalling.

“INEC has an assemblage of the best lawyers in the country either as staff or consultants and its reputation will make it shun acts that will be sub judice before the court.

“There is no order restraining INEC from implementing the decision and it is only when such is obtained that the issue of sub judice will arise,” he said.

NAN reports that the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had on Thursday announced de-registration of 74 political parties for failing to meet Constitutional requirements for them to exist as political parties in the country.