INEC under pressure to register 80 more parties, says Chairman

•Wonders how commission will design ballot papers for parties

By Lateef Ibrahim

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said yesterday that it is under immense pressure to register 80 additional political parties for the country.
The Commission’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this during the National Stakeholders Forum on Elections held in Abuja.
With the last week’s registration of 21 new political parties by the Commission, Nigeria currently has 67 political parties.
The INEC Chairman lamented that the commission is now being confronted with the challenge of how to design ballot papers in future elections, following the growing number of registered political parties in the country.
Prof. Yakubu, who was represented by a National Commissioner in the commission, Dr. Kunle Ogunmola, pointed out that “By the time the issue of independent candidate comes into the fore, there will be more problems for INEC, because right now, we are thinking of how we will design our ballot paper to take care of all the registered political parties.”
Notwithstanding, the INEC Chairman assured that the Commission would continue to register new parties if they met the constitutional requirement.
He said, “We will continue to register parties as long as they comply with the provisions of the constitution.
“For now, we have registered 21 more parties, making a total of 67 now. We have about 80 more applications from various associations, wanting to get registered as political parties.
“Our hands are tied. There is no way we can regulate it for now. We will continue to register them until the time stipulated by the constitution for us to put a stop to it,” he said.
Prof. Yakubu said the commission was working with all stakeholders including development partners to ensure it delivers a most credible election in 2019.
He added that the commission had experimented with the electronic transmission of results during the last Anambra governorship election with the hope that by 2019 the device would be deployed full scale.
Speaking at the event, the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, who was represented by Juliet Ibekaku, observed that the victory of the opposition party in the 2015 would not have been possible without the electoral reform introduced by previous government.
He said that President Muhammadu Buhari was committed to ensuring reform of the electoral process continued, especially in actualizing full autonomy for INEC.
Also, the Executive Director of Policy and Legislative Advocacy, Mr Clement Nwankwo said though, the country’s electoral process has witnessed some improvement, a lot more reforms were needed to enhance the credibility of elections.
He said that INEC could achieve more in the area of credible election if legislations were passed to empower it deploy new technologies.