On INEC’s power to deregister political parties

On February 6, 2020, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) took the nation by surprise by deregistering 74 out of the 91 registered parties that participated in the 2019 general elections.
The exercise left only 18 parties presently on the INEC’s register.
The commission said its decision followed a comparative review and court-ordered re-run elections arising from litigations on political parties in the last elections.
It said the political parties performed poorly and failed to win at least one political seat in the last general elections.
INEC also said the parties breached the requirement for registration of political parties under section 225 to the 1999 Constitution (Fourth Alteration Act).
The instant section relied on by INEC was altered in 2017 by the National Assembly during the constitutional review and was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari on May 4, 2017 as the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (Fourth Alteration, No 9) Act, 2017.
The section effectively empowers INEC to de-register political parties on numerous grounds including breach of any of the requirements for registration; failure to win at least twenty-five percent of votes cast in one State of the Federation in a Presidential election; or one Local Government of the State in a Governorship election; failure to win at least one ward in the Chairmanship election; one seat in the National or State House of Assembly election; or one seat in the Councillorship election.
Although only three parties were registered by the Federal Military Government for the elections in 1999, the last general election in 2019 saw a record 91 political parties that fielded over 23,000 candidates.
The deregistration of 74 political parties in February 2020 certainly was not the first time INEC would wield such power since the restoration of democracy in 1999.
For instance, in 2003, INEC under the leadership of late Dr Abel Guobadia struck out some political parties from its register which prompted the late legal luminary and former presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP), Chief Gani Fawehinmi, whose party was one of those affected, to challenge the action of the electoral body in court.
Gani who argued that the deregistration of parties violated the freedom of association won the case in court.
INEC, under the chairmanship of Prof Attahiru Jega also embarked on the exercise, when it axed 39 political parties between 2011 and 2013 on the strength of Section 78 (7) (I & ii) of the Electoral Act 2010 (As Amended).
In fact, in 2012 alone, the Attahiru Jega-led INEC deregistered 28 political parties.
The affected parties also challenged the action in court and also got a restraining order barring INEC from deregistering any political party.
In the latest exercise by INEC in 2020, some of the affected parties, as usual, kicked against INEC’s action, insisting that it acted illegally.
Earlier, 33 of the affected political parties had approached the Federal High Court, Abuja in 2019, to restrain INEC from deregistering parties pending the determination of their suit while the court had fixed February 17, 2020 for ruling in the case.
But on February 6, few days after the court fixed February 17 for ruling in the case, INEC struck and deregistered the 74 political parties from its register on the grounds that they breached the provision of section 225 (b) of the constitution.
After INEC wielded its hammer, the court granted the injunction sought by the 33 political parties to bar the electoral commission from deregistering them.
However, in a separate suit filed by Hope Democratic Party (HDP) which queried the February 6, 2020 decision by INEC to deregister it and 73 other political parties, a Federal High Court in Abuja a couple of days ago held that the INEC has the constitutional powers to so deregister the political parties if they failed to meet provisions of Section 225 of the constitution.
Justice Taiwo Taiwo who presided over the HDP’s case had, in May, also ruled in favour of INEC after the National Unity Party (NUP) asked the court to declare that INEC had no power under section 225(a) of the constitution to de-register the plaintiff as a political party or any other political party.
No doubt, the Supreme Court, in the case of INEC v. Balarabe Musa (2003) 10 WRN 1, had upheld the fundamental right of Nigerian citizens to form or belong to political parties of their choice in accordance with Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution of the Republic.
The decision had brought about a proliferation of political parties since the country returned to democratic civil rule under the Fourth Republic.
It is however sad that the expansion of the democratic space occasioned by the caselaw was exploited by certain politicians of suspected ill-motivated agenda who set up all kinds of political associations and proceeded to register them as political parties.
We recall how some of the registered political parties, for instance, amazingly abandoned their presidential candidates and adopted Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidates of the All Progressive Congress and Peoples Democratic Party respectively in the last 2019 general elections.
Which was why we earlier applauded the National Assembly in 2017 for amending section 225 of the 1999 Constitution to empower INEC to de-register political parties that failed to win any election to end the mockery of multi-party democracy in the country through the unprincipled proliferation of political parties.
We at the Daily Times of Nigeria therefore hold the view that the latest judgment of the court on the power of INEC to deregister political parties if found to have breached the provisions of section 225 cannot be faulted as the court had merely performed its duty of interpreting the constitution.
In fact, we are surprised that any of the affected political parties could go to court in view of the clear provisions of section 225 of the 1999 Constitution (As Amended) without first seeking to review the constitutional provision.
However, we strongly condemn the decision of INEC to have deregistered the 74 political parties from its register on February 6, 2020 after the issue on its constitutional powers to so do had not only become a subject of litigation before a Federal high court in Abuja but also that the trial court had fixed a date to deliver a well-considered ruling on the matter.
We hold that the mere fact that the case was already in court, even without any interim order restraining it, INEC should have known that by the doctrine of lis pendens, it ought not to have deregistered the parties before the court’s ruling fixed for February 17.
We hope that the electoral body would learn from this indiscretion and guard against recurrence in future.

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Ise-Oluwa Ige, PhD