Frontline legal luminary and activist, Femi Falana has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to exercise its constitutional powers and deregister some political parties.
Falana, in an article he entitled “INEC’s fresh power to deregister political parties”, and made available to reporters on Sunday, pointed out that only 10 parties will survive deregistration by INEC.
Falana noted that if the electoral umpire followed the constitutional provisions on deregistration of political parties, 81 political parties would go down.
He said his assessment was based on the performances of the political parties in the just-concluded general elections.
He cited the May 2017 amendment to Section 225 of the 1999 Constitution, which empowered INEC to deregister any political party on the grounds of “(a) breach of any of the requirements for registration; (b)failure to win at least 25 per cent 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.”
Falana added that “From the foregoing, it is indubitably clear that INEC has been conferred with enormous powers to deregister political parties that fail to meet the fresh constitutional prerequisites.
“Going by the results of the 2019 general elections, the 91 registered political parties may have been reduced to less than 10 that may have scaled the constitutional hurdle.”
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