No More Registration Of Parties —Jega
The INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, says there will be no registration of more political parties for now.
He said at a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum on Monday in Abuja, that the commission had two more applications for registration of parties, but that they came too late.
“There is a legal requirement as to when applications should be made before they are processed.
“For now and until after the April elections, we are not going to have any political party registered but beyond that, we may consider new applications,” he said.
Jega said the number of political parties was not a problem for
the conduct of a free, fair and credible elections.
He added that INEC was, however, concerned with the conduct of parties’ affairs, particularly their internal democracy.
“It doesn’t appear as if our politicians and the political parties are learning the lessons that we ought to learn from our past mistakes.
“Internal party democracy is very important in the democratisation process in ensuring that there is a credible electoral process in place.
“From what we are seeing, we are very much concerned that many parties do not take the issue of internal party democracy with the seriousness that it deserves.
“We are hearing complaints about lack of due process. We sent monitors to monitor the congresses of parties.
“We have been monitoring and there are a number of cases where we have very serious concerns and of course we communicate it appropriately to the political parties.
“We expect that they will make corrections to the observations that we point out to them,” Jega said.
He appealed to leaders and members of political parties to pay serious attention to the requirement of internal party democracy.
“They have obligation to respect their own constitutions as well as respect the provisions of the Electoral Act and the country’s constitution.
“It doesn’t say good for our system and for our transition to democracy when parties flout their own constitutional provisions when it comes to conducting party primaries and electing delegates.
“It is very important that attention is paid to this,” he added.
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