Court invalidates election commission's rejection of parties

Nigeria’s court of appeal on Friday invalidated the grounds on which the country’s electoral body denied applications by 27 groups for registration as political parties.

In its unanimous decision, the court of appeal in the capital, Abuja, said the the Independent National Electoral Commission's (INEC) registration guidelines and aspects of the Electoral Act of 2001 on which they were based were contrary to the constitution.

"I restrain INEC...from basing the registration of political parties on the aforesaid offending provisions of the guidelines and the Electoral Act," Justice Dahiru Musdapher said as he presented the ruling.

Three parties were registered in June by INEC out of about 30 that had applied. This brought the number of recognised political parties in Nigeria to six.

Human rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi, leader of the unregistered National Conscience Party (NCP), had led the 27 other parties in challenging the conditions in a high court. But the court on 11 June granted only four of 17 demands by the parties, including the scrapping of a registration fee of 100,000 naira (US $862) each.

The other requirements voided by the court of appeal were that parties: set up offices in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states; submit their bank statements to INEC; and mention the names and addresses of the members of their executive organs.

Both the parties and INEC had criticised the ruling.

Four of the parties - NCP, People’s Redemption Party, Nigerian People’s Congress and Community Party of Nigeria - filed an appeal, while INEC's spokesman, Okpo S. Okpo, said it would challenge the appeal court ruling at the Supreme Court.

Fawehinmi told reporters in Lagos on Sunday he would lead an NCP delegation to the INEC office in Abuja on Monday to demand registration in compliance with the appeal court ruling.

The legal dispute over the parties’ registration and other suits challenging INEC’s plans to revise the voters’ register have made it less than certain that local government elections will be held on 10 August as scheduled. INEC Chairman Abel Guobadia told the ‘Vanguard’ newspaper on Sunday that it would not start voter registration until all the cases in court had been dealt with.