The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has no capacity to prosecute erring political parties.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Solomon Soyebi, stated this on Thursday during his appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“I will admit that we don’t really have the capacity for prosecution but all we can do is what we are doing,” he said.
“We’ve alerted them (political parties) and just like what we do to the audit of their accounts, we will make all the submissions to the National Assembly as stipulated by the law.”
Aside from their finances, Soyebi criticised the activities of some political parties which he said were against the Constitution, saying about 17 of them do not have addresses in the Federal Capital Territory as stipulated by the law.
He said, “A whopping 18 (parties) don’t even have the right composition as stipulated by law in their national executives – all these were the things we brought out to them for immediate correction. We are not going to let these lie, we’ll make sure that we don’t rest until there is compliance.”
The INEC National Commissioner, however, warned that the Commission would not hesitate to sanction erring political parties by deregistering them.
According to him, although the judiciary might review the decision in some cases, INEC is “looking very seriously at the clauses of deregistration”.
“The court could bring them back but we will still fulfil our own constitutional responsibilities. There are rules (guarding against) defaulting and I’m telling you it’s just moving towards deregistration.”
Soyebi also hinted that the Commission is working tirelessly to ensure success in the conduct of the 2019 general elections.
He informed that 108 political parties have applied for registration, out of which five were recently registered with the return of one by a court order, and 17 others in advanced stages of registration.
“In the next five weeks, we want to assure you that those that merit registration will still come onboard,” he said.
“So you will not be surprised that before we have the 2019 elections, we could be talking of about 60 or more political parties contesting.”
