The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Nigeria has announced that 75 political parties have been deregistered for breaching regulations that govern their operations. The commission carried out a review of the performance of political parties after the 2019 general elections to see which parties qualify to continue existing.

Mahmood Yakubu, the Chairman of INEC who announced the de-registration in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, said it was due to the inability of the affected parties to fulfil the requirements for their existence, based on Section 225A of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). Some of the reasons for deregistration include:

• Failure of the parties to win at least 25% of votes cast in one state of the federation in a presidential election or one local government in a gubernatorial vote.
• Failure to win at least one ward in a chairmanship election, a seat in the national or state legislature, a seat in at the councillorship level.

The INEC chairman also claimed that the logistics issues experienced during the previous election were due to the exorbitant number of parties.

“We underestimated the kind of logistical problem that implied the size of the ballot papers, result sheets and so on. By the time these materials started arriving, we realised that it was a huge logistical problem.”

Implications

The next general elections in Nigeria are expected to hold in 2023. A smaller number of political parties can mean that the cost of conducting elections will reduce and the burden on logistics, eased. Also, it may be the year the country produces a third force candidate as members of the dissolve political parties may form new alliances with the existing ones.

Prior to this downsize, Nigeria had a total of 91 registered parties. With this recent review by INEC, only 18 parties are currently authorised to operate within the country.