Joe Effiong, Uyo
The former speaker of Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Mr Sam Ikon has thrown his weight behind the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) deregistration of some political parties in the country due to poor electoral performance.
INEC had on February 6, 2020, announced the deregistration of some political parties in the country, leaving only a few from the pack that contested election year
Ikon, who is also a former member of the House of Representatives representing Etinan federal constituency of Akwa Ibom state, said it was better to have pruned down the number of parties in Nigeria to make the election more manageable.
“For me, the deregistration is fine. People should be able to build their political parties; not just to be registering parties all over the place and then collecting money for election and that that’s all.
“What work have they done at the grassroots? You don’t need to win the presidency or the national assembly.
“If you can win a few House of Assembly seats to your party then you start from there. It is about having a popular person who can harness support for party. If you have 20 state Assembly persons across the country, you can start with that; and later have two or three national Assembly then you keep building.
“But these guys don’t do anything; they just sit down after they had registered the party. They just need the party, but to do what? For me, it doesn’t make any sense,” Ikon reasoned.
He said deregistering the parties doesn’t infringe upon the rights of individuals on freedom of association as the politicians can associate within the remaining parties since no party would stop the officials of the deregistered parties from associating within the registered parties.
“That is a relative perfection. There is no ban on political parties; it’s only that these ones are not functional; and for me; you are not functional, you are not functional. It must be a vehicle for somebody to jump into to pick a tick in the other one to contest election and sooner after jumps into the other one.”
Though he affirmed that the nine parties are still too many, Ikon, however, conceded that they should be allowed to remain for now to give people the political latitude to operate.
He also said it would be difficult for INEC to stop people from jumping from one political party to the other overnight as the election umpire might not have control over people who want to associate with any of the registered parties.