The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has faced severe criticisms over purported plans to register more political parties in the country.
The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay SAN, described Yakubu as a “very weak man” who was not doing enough to control proliferation of political parties.
Sagay expressed dissatisfaction that Nigeria presently has 91 registered parties, noting that no ideal democracy should have more than 10.
He noted that the proliferation caused majority of the problems experienced during the 2019 general election, saying that many electorates found it difficult to identify the logos of their preferred political parties.
The professor of law queried the rationale behind registering more parties when the nation was still grappling with coping with the huge number already registered.
Speaking with Independent, Sagay said, “Well, I think INEC is to blame for all these. A body like INEC should be proactive. When they found that the whole thing was getting out of hand with 91 parties, they should have done something about it.
“I myself with my level of education find it very difficult to identify my party logo out of the 73 political parties that contested in the presidential election. Now, INEC is talking of 200 and they are just saying it without thinking of what to do about it so that we don’t get to that level.
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“Shouldn’t INEC now through the government propose an amendment to the provisions of the constitution for registration of political parties?
“That is what INEC should be talking of. They should get their lawyers to draft a document and send it to the Ministry of Justice so that the conditions for registration can be made more drastic and at the end, we won’t have more than 10 political parties.
“For me, it’s all a sign of INEC’s weakness which has been a serious problem particularly in these 2019 elections as against the one in 2015 when we had a chairman of INEC who knew what he was doing.
“The current INEC chairman is a very weak man and doesn’t have any initiative. He is not proactive and collapses easily under problems and just articulates the problems without any solutions while waiting for somebody else to do it for him.”