The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, at the quarterly meeting of INEC and the political parties, said: “As I speak with you, the Commission has over 108 political associations seeking fresh registration. We want to assure all the associations that the Commission will register those that met the legal requirements. They should take that for granted on the Commission.
“But for those that have already been registered, I want to draw your attention to certain issues. The constitution is very clear on the processes and conditions for registration that must be complied with: Section 223 of the constitution talks about the validity of the composition of the political parties.
“Unfortunately, out of the 46 registered political parties, only 28 parties are in compliance. The other 18 political parties have not complied with that requirement. Section 222 of the constitution requires political parties to establish offices in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) but as we speak today, only 29 political parties are in compliance while 17 political parties have not.
“So, we have 17 political parties which have no offices in FCT or their rents have expired which amounts to the same thing of not having office in FCT,” he said.
On 2015 election expenses
On the failure of many parties to submit the 2015 general elections expenses to the Commission, he said: “Parties are expected to submit to the Commission their election campaign expenses for the 2015 general elections but as we speak only five political parties are in compliance.
“While 24 other political parties did not comply, the case of 17 parties is understandable because they are registered after the general elections. But for parties that contested the general elections, only five complied,” he lamented.
‘Not yet time for campaign’
Speaking further, Prof Yakubu said: “We have written to the political parties urging them to inform the Commission if there are issues. But parties as entities must comply with the Constitution and the Electoral Acts, which is actually the basis for their registration and existence.
“Finally, I want to reiterate the appeal I made yesterday to all the political parties that although INEC has fixed a date for the general election, we are yet to release the time table for the election and the law is very clear on when electioneering and campaigns will commence. It remains 90 days to the election and must stop 24 hours to the actual casting of ballot.
“However, we have noticed that some people using the name of some political parties are already in campaign mood. Since there is no provision for any Nigerian to contest election as an independent candidate for now and since every candidate must be sponsored by a political party, we expect everybody to comply with electoral rules.
“It is true that no political party has openly declared campaign for 2019 general elections but the parties owe it a duty to obey the laws of the land. INEC is yet to issue timetable for the commencement of electioneering campaign and we expect all political parties to comply,” he warned.
Nigerians alarmed
Despite these complaints, many Nigerians are alarmed at the rate INEC is registering parties, especially, when it is obvious that many of the registered parties only exist in portfolios and handbags.
This is more so that apart from the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Grand Alliance, and perhaps the Labour Party (LP), Nigerians can hardly recall names of the avalanche of other parties, their acronyms, logos and symbols yet they only contribute to making the electoral process more cumbersome.
Political observers and analysts therefore wonder whether the electoral umpire monitors the other 44 parties to ascertain their health status and adherence to the extant laws.
Although they sometimes field candidates during elections, they hardly follow democratic ethos in their nominations. At best, some of the chairmen, where they have failed to find a ‘favourable’ candidate from within or outside their parties to adopt, resort to making themselves candidates during an election.
They do so not in a bid to participate in a keen contest because in most cases they lack the wherewithal to embark on such rigorous campaigns needed by a political party to even contest election.
Need for diligence before registering parties
Therefore question whether the commission does due diligence before it registers the parties is germane as it is not enough for people to gather few friends from other party of the country to fulfil the condition of national spread as well as pay the sum of N1 million to attract registration.
It is also germane here to examine the provision of the Electoral Act in the registration of parties. For an association to be registered as a political party, the names and addresses of its national officers must be registered with INEC. Every citizen of Nigeria must be free to join the association irrespective of place of origin, birth, ethnicity, sex or religion. Provision of the minutes of the meeting of members of its National Executive Committee indicating approval and adoption of the name, constitution, manifesto and symbol/logo of the proposed political party. It also requires a copy of its constitution to be registered with the commission.
Other conditions are the name and symbol or logo of the association must not contain any ethnic or religious representation/idea; the headquarters of the association must be situated in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja; and it must hold regular elections for its executive and governing bodies.
Although the conditions for the registration of political parties are very sketchy and seemingly easy to fulfil, the function of INEC to monitor existing parties should have provided the check to political parties’ proliferation.
Need for constant monitoring
Many Nigerians are of the view that through constant monitoring, defaulting parties can be exposed for lack of seriousness in observing the rules.
This is because apart from registering and de-registering political parties, the law also permits it to monitor the operations of all political parties. It also arranges for annual examination and auditing of the finances of political parties and provides that it monitors the campaigns of political parties, while providing rules and guidelines for the operation and conduct of political parties.
To what extent has INEC gone in the discharge of these functions? Had the commission risen up to its task, would it have been necessary for the chairman to have raised alarm that some of the parties had erred in observing the rules? Why did the chairman not name the errant parties?
In Nigeria, even the so-called big parties often flout the legal requirements that specifically stipulate that the parties must hold regular meeting, regrettably INEC only watches and says nothing.
For instance, PDP has always alleged that APC observes in breach the provision that parties should hold regular meetings. Apart from APC, it is not clear whether the mushroom parties hold any meeting at all yet when INEC calls a meeting of political parties its conference hall is usually capacity filled.
The issues raised by the INEC chairman, has thrown up a heated debate on the matter amongst some parties as well as political analysts regarding the role of INEC in addressing the deviant behaviour of parties in the country.
National chairman, National Democratic Party (NDP) Chudi Chukwuani, said: “Perhaps the current chairman of INEC was not in Nigeria in 2002/2003 when the Supreme Court held in a case brought by the late legal sage chief Gani Fawehinmi that NCP can have their office in Lagos or elsewhere in Nigeria for their operational issues but for the purposes of securing registration as a political party, office in Abuja is required.
“Also the INEC chairman conveniently forgot the constitutional requirement that parties are to be funded by government but the past PDP administration in connivance with INEC decided not to fund political parties in order to enable PDP to continue to loot the public treasury forever without any form of opposition. That same scenario appears to be playing out in the present time.”
Sanctions
On sanctions against defaulting parties, Chukwuani said: “there’s nothing contained in the laws of this nation regarding sanctions for default, anything in that regard must evolve from a judicial process.”
Chairman of the Advanced Democratic Peoples Alliance (APDA), Mohammed Shittu, said the commission should move beyond rhetorics and apply sanctions as the law has stipulated.
He said: “Let INEC apply appropriate measure within the law to address this issue.”
Shittu does not believe that parties should rely on government to be funded. “For our party, we don’t believe that we should go cap in hand looking for money from government.
“Our members should be able to fund the party. We should not support the issue of allowing government fund the party if we want to have a democracy that is free from government interference. So we must urge people to fund parties by themselves. “
The executive director of Policy and Legal Advocacy Center, Clement Nwankwo, said: “INEC has shown categorically that it has no capacity to prosecute electoral offenders and no capacity to monitor campaign finance.
“So the electoral offence commission recommends itself. That commission will also have the responsibility of monitoring campaign finance.
“As it is now, the Electoral Act mentions specific amounts that candidates running for positions should not exceed. Now, a candidate may not exceed that amount but he has people around him through whom he can exceed that amount.”
