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Nigeria now has 18 duly registered political parties —INEC

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has confirmed that Nigeria has 18 duly registered political parties in the wake of a Supreme Court judgement on Friday.

This was made known by INEC’s Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Mr. Nick Danzang, on Monday during a guest appearance on a Channels Television current affairs programme, “Politics Today.”

When asked how many parties were now left in the books of INEC, Danzang said, “As we speak now, we have 18 registered political parties.

“Before the conduct of the 2019 general elections, we had 73 parties that fielded candidates. And in the aftermath of the conduct of the 2019 general elections, and as it is expected by us, by law, whenever a general election is conducted, INEC does an assessment of the performance of the political parties”, he said.

Read also: INEC targets 120m voters for 2023 elections

Ripples Nigeria had reported on Friday that the Supreme Court upheld INEC’s decision to deregister 74 political parties earlier registered with the electoral umpire.

In the judgment delivered on Friday by Justice Chima Centus Nweze, the Supreme Court went with an earlier decision by the Court of Appealto deregister the parties, which he said was in line with the laws and compliance with the extant provisions of the Constitution and Electoral Act.

According to INEC, “if a party is not able to win any seat at all in the elections, then INEC had the right by law to deregister them.”

By Mayowa Oladeji…

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