…says ‘we won’t monitor your primaries’
Independent National Electoral Commission, on Friday, dissociated itself from the activities of the 74 deregistered political parties in the country.
INEC stressed that the status of the deregistered parties remained invalid until the Supreme Court rules on their matter.
INEC had in February 2029 deregistered the 74 parties, citing their failure to meet certain criteria listed in the constitution, including winning at least 25 percent of the votes cast in one state in a presidential election or 25 percent of the votes cast in one local government area.
But some of the deregistered political parties went to court to challenge INEC’s action.
Court of Appeal, Abuja, ruled In August 2020 that INEC illegally deregistered 22 of the parties.
But this came after the same court earlier validated the power of INEC to deregister the parties while determining a case involving the National Unity Party.
Both INEC and the NUP then headed to the Supreme Court in separate applications to challenge the court’s verdicts.
INEC National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, said in a statement that while the Supreme Court judgment is being awaited, some of the deregistered parties have been writing the commission to inform it of their plans to conduct primary elections.
According to Okoye, “The Commission will continue to recognise and deal with only the 18 registered political parties pending the final resolution and determination of the various appeals filed and pending before the Supreme Court.
“Consequently, INEC will not monitor any purported primaries by any of the deregistered political parties and will not issue access code to or accept the list and particulars of candidates emanating from such primaries.”
He stated that the conflicting judgements of the Court of Appeal were “in the interest of the electoral process” for both matters to be consolidated before any action is taken.
“The electoral process will be better served through a final resolution of the issues in the deregistration of political parties. It will also enable the commission to stand on firm grounds rather than pick and choose which between two conflicting decisions it should obey,” he said.