Mixed Reactions Trail Deregistration Of Parties

Alhaji Yahaya Ndu, National Chairman, defunct African Renaissance Party (ARP), has said that the deregistration of political parties by INEC was “a right step in a right direction.“

Ndu said this on Sunday while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

“It should be common sense that any authority that has powers to register political parties must automatically equally have powers to deregister them.

“So long as there is nothing wrong in INEC registering political parties that meet certain conditions, for so long will there be nothing wrong in INEC deregistering political parties that no longer meet certain conditions, “ he said.

Ndu expressed optimism that his party would re-apply to INEC for re-registration before the end of 2013.

Also in a separate interview, a former FCT Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Mr. Sunny Moniedafe, supported INEC continuous deregistration of political parties.

“I am in full support of the deregistration particularly as they have not met the requirements of the electoral act and the constitution, “ he said.

Lagos State Chairman of the now defunct National Action Council (NAC), Chief Gboyega Adeniji, said INEC did well to deregister more political parties.

“INEC is lawful until the Act that gave it the power is successfully challenged in court,“ he said.

He, however, said that his party would challenge this decision in court.

However, the National Chairman of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Mr. Damian Ogbonna, condemned INEC’s action.

Ogbonna said that the action “depicts that of a lawless organisation.“

“The last deregistration of political parties by INEC, parties including PPP made application to court to hold the commission on contempt of court concerning its action, yet it still went on to deregister more parties,“ he said.

Ogbonna said that it was a breach of the 1999 constitutional for INEC to continue to deregister parties, pointing out that so long as subvention was no longer given to parties, they would die a natural death.

NAN reports that INEC within the week deregistered two more parties, thereby making the number of deregistered parties 38.