2023: INEC’s plan to register more parties ridiculous — Ex IPAC Chair

A former National Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Dr Yunusa Tanko, has said the plan by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register more political parties ahead of the 2023 general election is ridiculous.

INEC had last year deregistered 74 parties in the country, but a few days ago, the commission announced it had received new applications from 45 groups seeking to be registered as political parties ahead of 2023.

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But Dr Tanko in a telephone chat with Daily Trust, last night, said it was wrong for INEC to deregister 74 parties and plan to register 45 new ones, adding that it is a mockery of democracy.

“Even the parties that we have, we are cutting them by size and then increasing them. So we don’t even know exactly where we are; we don’t know our status.

“The political parties were deregistered out of place because INEC is planning to register more parties and I’m sure that people are also advocating for independent candidacy.

“So it makes a mockery of the deregistration in the first place. We need to see how we can arrange our elections electronically and manually.

“That way, every concern will be carried whether independent candidacy or a large number of political parties. So what we are doing is, we are just shortchanging our democracy by default,” he said.