De-registration of political parties is not new to the Nigerian political space but in the light of an unprecedentedly crowded ballot. in this last general elections, there is a fresh clamour for parties to be de-listed GABRIEL ATUMEYI, writes.
As political parties, activitist, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) other stakeholders take stock of the 2019 general elections and the lessons learned, there has been calls for the de-registration of non- performing or under performing political parties.
Legal luminary, Femi Falana (SAN) recently called on INEC to trim down the parties to the barest minimum, that judging by their performance and the 2018 amendment to section 225 of the 1999 constitution which empowers INEC to de-register political parties, that not more than 10 of the 91 political parties would survive the constitutional hurdle.
His position was also supported by a civil society group, Youth Alliance For Democratic Advancement (YADA) which believe that the proliferation of political parties is adversely affecting the nation’s electoral process.
According to the group, the long list of political parties on the ballot leads to confusion and results in the rise in cases of void votes. Speaking recently in Ekiti State, one of the co-ordinators of the organisation, Michael Ogungbemi said “ the idea that 91 parties participated in the general election is not good and that registering 91 political parties in a developing country like Nigeria with high level of illiteracy would not help the electoral system.”
He added that INEC should instead tentatively register most of these parties for local government and state House of Assembly elections, with performance benchmarks or criteria that if they score certain percentage of votes, they would qualify to participate in the governorship and National Assembly elections and up to the presidential election.
This is not the first time that the issue of de-registering political parties would be the subject of public discourse. It seems to be a recurring theme in every post election season ever since Nigeria’s political parties reached fifty. In 2008, late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua had consulted with the big four parties at the time, the PDP, AC, ANPP and the PPA on whether the nation’s political system should de-register under-performing political parties.
Also in December of 2012 INEC de-registered 28 political parties including PRP, NAP and Fresh Democratic Party but the de-registration directive of INEC was subsequently overturned in July of 2013.
The federal high court in Abuja had held that INEC has no power to de-register any political party in the country without recourse to the 1999 constitution as amended. Even going further to declare section 78(7)11) of the electoral act as unconstitutional, invalid, null and void, adding that it was offensive to the provisions of section 40 and section 222-229 of the constitution.
Similarly, in July 2015, an appeal court sitting in Lagos ruled against INEC’s de-registration of political parties on the basis of not winning elections. In the appeal brought by the National Conscience Party (NCP), the court held that it is not part of Nigeria’s constitution that every political party must win election in order for it to operate as one.
The overriding constitutional provision against de-registration of political parties is section 40, which provides that among other things that every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons , and in particular he may form or belong to any political party , trade union or any other association for the protection of his interests.
But the 2017 amendment was supposed to circumvent this barrier, such that by amending section 225, INEC is expressly empowered to de-register political parties for non- fulfillment of certain conditions which include failure to secure/win either a Presidential, Governorship, Local Government chairmanship or a seat in the National or State Assembly or a Councillorship.
But there seems to be no end in sight to the debate, while some have argued that there should be no need for de-registration of political parties as this parties are still evolving and that the large number allow them to accommodate different shades of opinion.
They argue that parties may not be nationally dominant but may hold sway or influence within a given area. Conversely, there are those who think that diversification must not be an end in itself. They also aver that it is not logical to register a plethora of political parties that exist only in the brief case of their promoters and which have no known roots among the masses for whom political parties serve, leading to parties that litter our political space and constitute clogs in the democratic wheel.
What’s more, in other climes reasonable conditions must be met before any intending association can be registered as a political party. Which are usually tied to their capacity to serve as mass movements that can articulate their programmes under impressive manifestos that will attract people to join them and make the quest for change within society.
This school of thought, believe that de-registration is a way of filtering the political space so that parties will compete healthily with each other and not for inactive parties to clog the political space.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP Sunday, the vice presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Alhaji Gani Galadima said that deregistration is not the right step. He added that parties needs time to evolve because of the peculiar nature of the Nigerian system.
He said: “ That is the position of the law now, that parties could be de-registered but if you look at it vis a vis the fundamental human right of actions expressed in the constitution. There is freedom of association, talking about association, political parties are also part of association.
“So in essence, the position that parties should be de-registered is contrary to the constitution of the land, which guarantees freedom of movement, freedom of association. I however wish to say that democracy in Nigeria is still evolving, and that INEC and the people should allow voter party to evolve, eventually to be practiced at a given time.
“They should allow matured parties to go into politicking. At the end of the day you will see that parties that are not serious will fall along the line.
“Not that parties that didn’t win, didn’t make effort. I am aware of the effort that some of us put in this thing. It has taken our resources, without any support from INEC or even from the government, contrary to what they have in advanced countries, contrary to the fact that we put all these in and we are determined to win election. There are some barriers that make us not to win election.
“There is this issue of monetisation. I agree that there are some parties that are not serious, there are some parties that are not just parties but some of us that have put in everything, we should be given time to evolve. Parties over time can reform and still perform better. That is what they have in advanced countries,” he said.
For public affairs analyst, Jide Ojo, the behavior of some of those fringe parties makes de-registeration the right way to go and that measures should be put in place to make it difficult for any association to just metamorphose into a political party.
He said: “ There was a constitutional amendment signed into law on June 5th 2018, it was part of the amendment that gave INEC the power to extend presidential runoff from 7 days to 21 days, part of the subsection of that particular section talk of de-registering or de-registration of none performing parties. That is, any party that did not win any seat in the general election. So I am sure that at some point, INEC would weld the big power because we can’t continue like this.
“Also because the clustering of the ballot paper and the shenanigans of many of the fringe parties. I think it is high time the commission weld the big stick. We possibly have had the challenge of some of the parties laying claims that INEC omitted their logo and the name of their party form the ballot paper even though they duly nominated their candidates. Should this be so, it is a huge risk that the election in which the major parties candidate emerge victorious may be nullified by the court.
“So it is always better for, in as far as the commission is acting within the ambience of the law, particularly the constitution because there was actually an earlier electoral act amendment, 2010, section 78 or there about, which says that any political party that didn’t win any seat or that forges documents to get registered can be de-registered by INEC.
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“But some of these political parties went to court to challenge INEC after they were de-registered in 2011, after the 2011 general election. So some of them were re-instated by the court, because the court says that INEC is imposing extra-constitutional provision on the parties, but now that the constitution has been altered to give INEC the leeway to de-register none performing parties, I think it is just good and proper for those parties that have not shown any seriousness to be de-registered. In my own estimation, it should not really end at that, there should also be condition for political parties when registered to be on the ballot paper.
“So I am saying that it is not enough for INEC to register parties, there must also be stringent conditions for those parties to field candidates. What we saw in the last elections, was political parties that got registered in August last year, going ahead to field presidential and other candidates.
“When the same month party primaries was supposed to start. So the parties have not even grown organically before they are fielding candidates. You see what happened with many of the individuals that were already presidential candidates even before they got the party platform or use it to contest. I think it is because of this shenanigan that I am in support of any non-performing political parties to be de-registered.
“What INEC should do as far as I am concerned, is to also raise the stake for registration of political parties. Right now all you just need is One Million Naira and having members of your interim national working committee reflecting the six geo-political zones or reflecting the federal character. If for instance, if INEC have raised the administrative fee from One Million to Fifty Million Naira, many of these parties will think twice before they want to turn their association into a political party,” he stated.
The publicity secretary of National Rescue Movement (NRM), Mr Chinedu Odenyi believes that there should be no need de-registering parties as the electorates should have wide variety of parties to choose from which is a fundamental part of their democratic right.
He said: “ The constitution allows freedom of association and political parties are allowed to evolve, and the electoral act saying parties that didn’t win election should be de-registered, it remains to be seen how that would stand in the face of clear provision of the constitution.
“ We are yet to see the gazzetted copy of that amendment but if the amendment is taken to be operational, it will have to be juxtaposed with the clear provision of the constitution about the registration of party. We will come to that and INEC should be prepared and they know that would not have the final say on the matter, that it is the court that would have the final say. I can imagine that it would go all the way.
“We may have two, three, four and even ten domical parties; parties are not necessarily formed to gain power. You can leverage in your sphere of influence, you can have an opinion to change mindset and all that. Now people tend to give example with the United States and the United Kingdom. We forget that in the United States there are over 100 parties and in the U.K it is the same thing. It is just that people play at their own local level. If I am strong in Zamfara and I can play my politics in Zamfara, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to play within that my sphere of influence.
“In a country of 200 Million, 91 parties can’t be too much. We mustn’t force people to belong to any political party if they do not feel that any of the political parties capture the ideological leaning of their world views,” he said.
Also speaking to LEADERSHIP Sunday, Festus keyamo, the head of strategic communication of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidential Campaign of the 2019 general election said there is need to find a balance that enhances the Nigerian political system.
He said: “The challenge really is to find a balance, that is the reason I challenge. One, it is undemocratic to restrict the democratic space and restrict people’s participation in active party politics. It is undemocratic. The other problem is that it is also not good to allow it to fester so much that you now find all sort of ridiculous and unserious parties putting pressure on the public purse. Like we saw in the last election, it will make them print more ballot papers. INEC will print more ballot papers, will make more preparations and all of that also tax the public purse too.
“So like I said the challenge is to find the balance. So how do we find the balance. We find the balance by one, ensuring that everybody who wants to participate in party politics is able to do so without restriction however there must be stringent rules to show how serious this collection of people who want to form a party are. Now, how do we know they are serious? It is to make the rules as clear and a bit more stringent than it is now.
“Why it is not good to restrict it to particular number of say five, or ten or fifteen or twenty. At the same time, we can make the rules as strict as possible to ensure that anybody or group of people who want to form political parties are deemed to be serious enough to be true competitors in the political space and not just jesters. Right now we have so many jesters in the political space.
“The challenge like I said is to find the balance. For instance, everybody can participate now as it is, but supposing a rule is made that if you don’t win a single seat in any House of Assembly, House of Assembly is even too big, lets say a councillor of a local government. If you are unable to win a single seat in the council of a local government within a period of four years after formation of your party, the party will be de-registered. That, I think can be a very good provision.
“In the entire country, not even local government chairman, something lower than local government chairman, a particular councillor seat. You should be required to win one at least or other kind of criteria can be generated. They can say for instance in the presidential election, if a party does not garner up to one percent of the total vote cast, one percent is big enough. Like for example total vote cast in the last election would be in the region of 30 million.
“One percent of that should be about 250,000 or 200,000, something in that region. Something to make them serious. Those are the examples I can think from the top of my head but we cannot leave them without criteria at all to just be forming party,” he said.
The national co-ordinator of APC Broom platform, Tom Ohikere, agrees that there should be balance between the desire to capture all shades of opinion and the necessity of having stronger political parties.
He said: “The endless proliferation of parties would lead to dire unseriousness as anyone could float a political party as it currently stands. People or politicians with similar ideological leanings or world view should always look at the possibility of coalescing to form a stronger, more structured and more representative party. If you look at the last election you will see that some candidates and parties share close ideological outlook. Like the AAC, ANN, YPP and several others.
“Most often than not seriousness is revealed by their determination to make strong showing at the polls and we know politics is all about coalition building, so I think there should be stringent conditions when it comes to party registration by INEC and consequently parties should be de-registered if they fail to make strong outings at the polls.
I think the conditions required to set up a political party so far is quite easy as I said earlier.
“In more advanced climes you may be asked to get a specific number of public signatures or endorsement as part of the criteria of registration or show sign of huge and visible acceptance by the people you are suppose to serve. Because before you become a political party there must be a crystallisation of sentiments or philosophy or possibly adherence.
“That is a group of people saying that idea appeals to me. So that you don’t have to register a party before going for a membership drive, even when you do so you should know that there is a significant nucleus, a significant number of people who subscribe to the vision or idea of that association or intending political party.
“So, I think there has to be a thinking not only to de-register but to reform because if you de-register they could still rebrand and seek re-registration under the existing process and conditions of party registration. More than more parties, we need strong parties which I think is ideal for a vibrant democratic system,” he said.
