The Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who made the announcement at a press conference Thursday in Abuja, said the parties failed to meet the constitutional requirements that determine their continuous existence.

With the development, according to Yakubu, Nigeria now has 18 political parties.

He said that 16 political parties, after assessing their outing in the 2019 general elections, fulfilled the requirements for existence based on section 225A of the 1999 Constitution (as amended)

They are Accord Party, Action Alliance, African Action Congress, African Democratic Congress, All Progressives Congress, All Progressives Grand Alliance and Allied Peoples Movement.Others are New Nigeria Peoples Party, National Rescue Movement, Peoples Democratic Party, Peoples Redemption Party, Social Democratic Party, Young Progressives Party, and Zenith Labour Party.

According to INEC, the 75 parties didn’t satisfy the requirement but one, the Action Peoples Party (APP), filed a suit in court and obtained an order restraining the commission from deregistering it. Yakubu said a new party, Boot Party (BP) which was registered by court order after the 2019 general elections would continue to exist.

He stated: “Prior to the Fourth Alteration, the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) had provided for the deregistration of political parties. Based on this provision, the commission, between 2011 and 2013, deregistered 39 political parties.

However, several of the parties challenged the power of INEC to deregister them, particularly on the ground that the Electoral Act is inferior to the constitution and that deregistration infringed their fundamental rights under the same constitution.

“Subsequently, the courts ordered the commission to reinstate the parties. It was for this reason that the National Assembly amended the constitution to empower the commission to deregister political parties on the following grounds:
“• Breach of any of the requirements for registration as a political party.
“• Failure to win at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in one state of the federation in a presidential election or 25 percent of the votes cast in one local government area of a state in a governorship election.
“• Failure to win at least one ward in a chairmanship election, one seat in the national or state assembly election or one seat in a councillorship election.

“In order to implement the provision of the Fourth Alteration to the Constitution, the commission carried out an assessment of political parties to determine compliance with the requirements for their registration.

“Similarly, following the conclusion of the 2019 general election, including court-ordered re-run elections arising from litigations, the commission was able to determine the performance of political parties in the elections.

“In addition, they were also assessed on the basis of their performance in the area council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) which coincided with the 2019 general election.

It should be noted that the FCT is the only part of the country where INEC is empowered by the constitution to conduct local government elections.”Yakubu said the commission had fixed September 19 and October 10, 2020 for the governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states.