The recent Supreme Court’s ruling, which upheld the power of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister political parties, has further underlined the urgent need to prune the number of political parties in the country. In the May 7, 2021 unanimous judgment delivered by Justice Chima Nweze, the apex court affirmed the deregistration of the National Unity Party (NUP), one of the 74 political parties deregistered by the electoral umpire in February 2020 owing to their inability to win at least one elective position in the 2019 general election.
The ruling was also an affirmation of the Court of Appeal earlier ruling on deregistration of the NUP. The apex court ruled that INEC rightly exercised its powers conferred on it by the 1999 Nigerian Constitution in deregistering the parties. For instance, Section 225(a) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) empowers INEC to deregister a political party for (a) breach of any of the requirements for registration, (b) failure to win at least 25 per cent of votes cast in (i) one state of the federation in a presidential election or (ii) one local government of the state in a governorship election or (c)failure to win at least (i) one ward in chairmanship election, (ii) one seat in the National or State House of Assembly election or (iii) one seat in the councillorship election.
The ruling is a departure from its earlier judgment of November 8, 2002 where it held that INEC lacked the constitutional powers to issue guidelines for deregistration of political parties. In the 2002 ruling, the apex court relied heavily on the provisions of section 40(a) of the 1999 constitution (as amended) which provides 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.” However, the Supreme Court this time averred that it found no reason to set aside the concurrent findings of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal, which had earlier upheld INEC’s decision to deregister some political parties. It held that INEC acted within the law and in compliance with extant provisions of the Electoral Act. Though the constitution grants rights to peaceful assembly and association and freedom of movement in Sections 40 and 41, the proviso to the said Section 40 states unambiguously that “the provisions of this section shall not derogate from the powers conferred by this constitution in the Independent National Electoral Commission with respect to political parties to which that constitution does not accord recognition.”
With the apex court’s ruling, the prospect of reinstating the remaining 73 deregistered political parties, which have pending appeals in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, is doubtful.
Let INEC go ahead and deregister any political party that does not meet the requirement for its continued existence and thereby drastically reduce the number of political parties in the country. Moving forward, INEC should also exercise caution in registering more new political parties and ensure that only the qualified ones are registered.
It is worth mentioning that about 91 political parties participated in the 2019 general election, which made the ballot difficult to manage. As a result of the problems engendered by such unmanageable number of parties, concerned Nigerians called for the reduction of political parties in the country. The huge number of parties created logistics problems for both the electoral umpire and the voters as the ballot became so unwieldy to handle. Even with 18 political parties now recognised by INEC, there is need to further prune the number to a manageable size. Having 18 parties on the ballot will be cumbersome, considering that many of the voters are illiterate. Therefore, INEC must make less haste in registering new political parties put at over 40. Instead of rushing to register new parties, we urge politicians and sponsors of such mushroom parties to join the existing ones. We say this because our experience in 22 years of unbroken democracy has clearly shown that we do not actually need more than five political parties in the country.