purported application for registration of three political parties with the APC
acronym appeared to have been resolved yesterday by the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega. He said no party
with the acronym had been registered.
Three potential parties — All Progressive Congress (APC), African People’s
Congress (APC) and All Patriotic Citizens (APC) — are at the centre of the
saga.
Prof. Jega said in Kaduna yesterday that since INEC had not registered any
group with the APC acronym, the current controversy was unwarranted.
He also cleared the air on speculations that the commission was frustrating the
main opposition parties in the country from using the name APC and merging into
one party to challenge the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015
general elections.
Prof. Jega maintained that there were procedures to be followed for the
registration of political parties, and whichever group that meets the
guidelines would be registered at the appropriate time.
He made the clarifications shortly after ‘2Hannu Dayawa’, a live phone-in
programme on Radio Nigeria, Kaduna.
The INEC boss said that the All Progressive Congress officially notified the commission
of their intention to merge into one political party about five or six days
ago, adding that, despite the controversy that had trailed the purported
registration of another APC, the commission was yet to do so.
Prof. Jega said what the commission was doing at present is screening political
groups that have approached it for registration.
He said, “This issue has generated controversy in the past few weeks. First,
the truth is that no political party wrote to notify us that it is planning to
merge with some other political parties until the past five days or so.
serious when one group came out to seek registration and I guess that was what
made them write and notify us. But that is not the issue. The main issue is
that there are guidelines for registering political parties which want to merge
to become a new party. There are also guidelines for individuals or groups
which want to form a political party for registration.
“The guidelines for registering a new political party are different from that
of registered political parties which want to merge. For registered political
parties which want to merge, they must have agreed to merge and each of the
political parties in the merger must hold a convention and agree to withdraw
their registration as a political party to become part of the new party to be
formed through the merger.
“After their conventions, they are expected to write and request INEC to
withdraw their former registration and say they want to join a new party. In
spite of all the controversies, none of these political parties which want to
merge has held their convention.
“We only read in the newspapers that they have the intention of merging and
nobody wrote us until about five or six days ago. If anybody wants to register
a political party, you are expected to tell INEC of your intention by saying
that you want to register a party with so and so name and you want to know the
procedure for doing so.
“Only one group came. The group asked one lawyer to write INEC saying it wants
to form a political party with a particular name and it wants to know the rules
and procedures for registration as a political party.
“As far as I am concerned there is no controversy in registration of new parties.
INEC has not registered any political party with any name. We have not gotten
to that stage, we have conflicting applications, and, so far, the process is
ongoing and people are making a mountain out of a mole hill. I think we should
be judged by the action that we have taken, not by speculation of what we are
likely to do.
“My stand on this is that it will be cleared as soon as we finished the
process. Nigerians will know what decision we have taken, and why we have taken
that decision.”
On the de-registration of political parties and its impact on the 2015 general
election, Jega said, “We acted according to the law; both the constitution and
the electoral law have granted us the power to register as well as to
deregister political parties, and what we have done is to deregister political
parties with compliance to legal provisions.”
He added, “God’s willing, INEC will try to do delimitation of constituencies in
good time before the 2015 general election. We have already finalised
preparation in-house, and we have come up with a plan of action.”
