The National Chairman of the National Transformation Party (NTP), Mr Emmanuel Mok, has faulted reasons the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has given for delisting political parties.
“A lot of the reasons that have been proffered as qualifying reasons for delisting, even the ones in the Electoral Act, are reasons that we have continued to make clear that these reasons don’t make sense.
“INEC’s argument to us have always not been strong arguments”, he said on Wednesday on Sunrise Daily.
Mr Mok noted that INEC is deliberately waiting for the National Assembly to finish with the constitutional review and include the electoral umpire’s power to delist political parties, which is already in the Electoral Act, part of the constitution, a situation he said will be “robbing the people of the fundamental right to associate and form political parties”.
He accused INEC of deliberately refusing to continue its appeal on the case of the Fresh Party.
The court had upturned INEC’s decision to delist the party from the list of political parties in Nigeria, “and that is why the judge emphasised that INEC as a matter of immediacy of urgency see that Hope Democratic Party is given the necessary required official recognition.
“As you know INEC has given the time table for the primaries of the next elections and if they continue as they have done with Fresh, then of course, Hope (Party) also will not be able to participate”, he said.
Mr Mok, who recalled that the present INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega was one of those who proposed the two party system, added that the system “put powers in the hands of power brokers.
“If someone is elected to be the chairman of both parties, these leaders will have so much power in vetting the whole political space and deciding those who can be presented to the people as candidates.
“But in a situation where you have a free entry space, it means that people who pay no allegiance to any power broker are able to come out and present themselves to the people”, he said, insisting that “it is necessary to leave these parties, especially when you don’t fund them”.
Mr Mok welcomed the new law allowing candidates to run independently, but was quick to add that “it is better for the polity to have multiple political parties”.
He maintained that a political party not winning in an election, does not make it irrelevant, insisting that “even if it costs INEC more money to conduct the activities of multiple political parties, it pays us to open the space so that the best candidate can be there in the public space”.
INEC had in December 2012 delisted 28 political parties including Rev. Chris Okotie’s Fresh Democratic Party; Balarabe Musa-led PRP; Tunji Braithwaite’s NAP, UNPP, ALP and 23 others for poor performances at the last general election and lack of operating offices in 36 states of the federation.
Others are said to have been affected in the exercise because they have been operating without office accommodation, political structure and short fall of operational staff.