Ahead of the April elections, the National Assembly, aware of the number of non- performing parties amended the Electoral Act 2010 to pave way for a natural and systematic weeding of the parties. Section 78 (7) of the Electoral Act 2010 provides that: ?The Commission shall have powers to deregister political parties on the following grounds ?(i) breach of any of the requirements for registration; (ii) for failure to win a seat in the National or State Assembly election.?
The debate over whether the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should de-register the parties that failed to satisfy the provisions of the Act has continued to agitate political party chieftains long after the April general elections.
Meanwhile parties are threatening legal action should INEC de-register any party based on the provisions of the Electoral Act.
A member of a party that failed to meet the requirements in the April polls said, ?selfishness and hypocrisy are behind the call for de-registration of parties.? A member of a party that fulfilled the requirements of the Electoral Act quipped, ?some set of people cannot continue to heat-up the polity by unnecessary formation of parties, which are run inside hotels and guest houses and cannot impact beyond their bedroom and among business associates.?
Based on the outcome of the April election, only 10 parties out of the 68 parties that contested will survive de-registration by INEC.
Effectively, only the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Labour Party (LP), Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN), All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Accord Party (AP), Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) and KOWA Party scaled the hurdle of Section 78 (7).
Since the election of 1999, the performances of the parties in the last four general elections have been revolving around four parties.
In 1999, only three parties contested the election. They are PDP, ANPP (former All Peoples Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD). The three parties had remarkable electoral impact. The PDP won the presidency and majority of the seats in the National Assembly. The ANPP won some state governorship elections and was Minority in the National Assembly. The AD held sway in the South West where it won the five governorship seats.
In the Senate, PDP won 59 of the 109 seats; ANPP won 29 and AD won 20. A seat was declared vacant. Of the 306 seats in the House of Representatives, PDP grabbed 206, ANPP 74 and AD 68 while 12 seats were declared vacant.
Of the 36 states, PDP won 21 states, ANPP won nine states, AD won six states in the South West.
In 2002, the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), United Nigeria Peoples Party (UNPP) and Nigeria Democratic Party (NDP) were registered, bringing the number of parties to six. By 2002 December the number of parties had increased to 28.
Among the 28 parties that contested for the election in 2003, only seven won seats in the National Assembly. In the Senate and House of Representatives, PDP won 76 and 223 seats respectively, the ANPP won 27 and 96 respectively while the AD won six and 34 seats. The UNPP and APGA won two seats each in the House of Representatives while Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and the NDP won a seat each. For the governorship election, the PDP won 31 states, ANPP six, AD and APGA one each.
In 2007 the number of the parties had increased to 43. One of the new parties, the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) won a senatorial seat and three seats in the House of Representatives; the Accord Party (AP) won a seat in the Senate and the Labour Party (LP) won a seat in the House of Reps.
Former member of ACN and an AD senator in 1999, Olabiyi Durojaiye said the multi-party arrangement is a mere distraction especially, ?to the electorates who will have to go through a long sheet of ballot paper before knowing what to do.?
While advocating for a two-party or four-party system, Durojaiye said a fewer parties ?would enable our democracy to stabilise.? He noted that the United Kingdom, for over three centuries, like the United States of America among others have operated successfully on a two-party structure even though there are other fringe parties championing specific causes.
He said that it was under a two-party - Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Congress (NRC) - structure that the acclaimed June 12, 1993 election was held.
He noted further that the second best electoral result was attained in 1998/99, when three political parties - PDP, ANPP and AD were registered during the Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar?s transition. He reflected that the third best electoral result was attained when about five parties - AG, NPC, NCNC and NEPU -canvassed for votes in the First Republic.
According to him, things went beyond control when the political class fell into the booby trap and registered over 50 political parties.
The former governor of old Kaduna State and the PRP governorship aspirant in Kaduna, Alhaji Balarabe Musa said any call for deregistration was uncalled for.
According to him, ?those people calling for the deregistration and pruning of the parties to whatever number they have in their mind are selfish.?
He said: ?Those people should not also forget that our Constitution allows for freedom of association and expression and if they prevail on INEC and the National Assembly because they have the means and the representation to get whatever they want then we shall head to courts.?
Musa dismissed the claims by some people that INEC had promised to de-register parties that failed to make impact in the elections. ?I will like to correct that impression. To the best of my understanding, INEC did not say it would deregister any party but as it were, if they go ahead, we will go to court. To the best of my understanding what the INEC boss, Prof. Attahiru Jega said was that the commission would only deregister a party when it fails to meet some requirements. Though the Electoral Act empowers the commission to de-register parties but that is at the discretion of INEC and Jega has promised not to exercise the power.?
Former Deputy Senate Minority Leader, Olorunnimbe Mamora urged the National Assembly to amend the Constitution again to strengthen its federalism and the electoral process. He noted that part of the amendment should aim at reducing the number of fringe parties in the country.
He said: ?The country does not need more than five parties. The present multi-party system whereby there are over 68 political parties is a setback. They are mere opportunists.?
A PDP chieftain in Lagos, Chief Olayinka Amos said that though most of the parties were unable to make meaningful impact in the April polls, ?but the decision to reduce the number is a constitutional matter and must be addressed constitutionally.? But former senator, Victor Oyofo who represented Edo North from 1999 to 2007 disagreed on the constitutionality of the matter. According to him, ?the parties are too many and unfortunately many people are taking advantage of that opportunity to enrich themselves by forming parties that could not make any impact beyond their bedroom.
?The electoral commission should review the number of parties. As a matter of fact, there should not be more than four of five parties. If I have my way we should not have more than two parties. The fewer the parties the better we can organise the country.
?Before our democracy can be robust we need to have fewer parties, not all the ones that sprang up over night without any political foundation.?
The National Chairman of the African Democratic Party (ADC), Ralph Nwosu urged the media not to push INEC and National Assembly to de-register parties, ?especially now that our democracy is still find its feet. Those parties that some people are calling on INEC to de-register would help to sustain the polity.?
He asked, ?what will it cost INEC to allow this parties to exist and what does it cost the country to have them? The parties offer Nigerians different shapes of opinion. There is also the consideration that the parties do not the taxpayers any dime. The electoral commission does not pay the parties, no matter their electoral performance unlike the claim of some people.
?Under a multi-party system the people will tilt towards ideological parties of their choice but as we speak now, there is no difference between PDP, ANPP, ACN, CPC and others. Some people that lost election in one party during the primaries crossed over to contest in another party. ?We should remember that Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari left ANPP to form CPC. If you remove Buhari for instance in CPC the party does not have any ideological focus that is binding apart from Buhari. If he leaves left the party, CPC will die.?
Nwosu also explain that the present more successful parties like the PDP, ACN are not as strong as the party people are saying should be de-registered in terms of ideology. ?For instance some of the parties centered around an individual.?
He said the fact that there are many parties enhances democracy because ?the more it gets stronger some parties will die. There is no need killing any party. It may take about 10 elections before some of the parties will fizzle away but by then the parties would have been reduced to four or five parties.?
But Mamora said that discomfort with the present multi party structure in the country is the problems the electorates go through trying to find the logo and name of their parties on the ballot papers. ?It is distressing and a waste of man-hours all in the name of expression of opinion, ? he said.
A member of the Conscience Party and Lagos-based-lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, said, ?the law cannot destroy parties that are already in existence because the interests of the members and their fundamental right to associate have accrued. We cannot wipe out such a right.?
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