INEC Closes Door Against Deregistered Political Parties In Edo, Ondo State Elections

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has declared that the deregistered political parties would not participate in both Edo and Ondo governorship elections.

Recall that the political parties got an Appeal Court verdict reversing their de-registration by the commission.

The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi said this at a webinar organised by the International Press Centre (IPC) for journalists in Ondo state ahead of the election

No fewer than forty journalists participated in the webinar organised in collaboration with the Ondo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Oyekanmi while responding to a question on if the verdict will be implemented said that

“The election will go on as scheduled; the judgment can’t change anything. Since none of them (affected parties) conducted primaries before the closing of the window, they cannot take part in the election and that cannot affect INEC’s preparation.

He said that the commission would appeal the judgment noting that there were six judgments on the deregistration of political parties and five of them were in favour of the commission.

According to him since the window of conducting primaries by political parties had expired under the election guidelines, no new party will be accommodated.

He added that

“the judgement of the Appeal court on the reinstatement of the delisted political parties would not affect preparations for the two governorship elections.

The Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade in his opening remarks said the webinar was part of efforts to improve the capacity of Journalists in election coverage, urging participants to embrace germane issues of professional and ethical reportage of electoral processes, including issues of inclusivity, fact-checking, hate speech and conflict-sensitive reporting (online/offline).

Arogundade commended EU for partnering IPC to ensure training of journalists for the forthcoming election.