2027: INEC Frustrating Efforts to Register New Parties, Opposition Coalition Declares

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The opposition coalition in the country has accused the independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of frustrating the registration of new political parties ahead of the 2027 elections.

One of its arrowheads and a former National Vice Chairman North-West of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Salihu Lukman, lamented that many of the existing registered parties who did not meet the electoral threshold of winning any seat in the last general election faced the threat of deregistration.

Lukman, in a statement yesterday, noted that  given this unpleasant reality, members of the coalition opened negotiations with some of the existing parties that had met the electoral threshold.

He added: “The question of negotiating the political party is the most difficult challenge. This is an area that many members of the coalitions have been engaging in different ways for more than a year now.

“Perhaps, it is important to highlight that there are many groups, including some members of the coalition, who have filed applications to register political parties. For reasons best known to INEC, these applications are being frustrated.

“The only conclusion that can be reached in the circumstance is that INEC has decided that it will not register new parties.”

Lukman stressed that some of the prospective parties being negotiated are being remotely pushed into crisis mode in the same way the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have been entangled with existential problems.

He pointed out that it was  almost a clear case of destroying the legal basis for any party to qualify to field candidates for 2027 other than the ruling APC.

“This is quite unfortunate coming during the tenure of a party that is envisioned to be progressive. It is even more troubling when it is during the tenure of a leader — President Bola Ahmed Tinubu — who has unarguably been in the vanguard of Nigeria’s democratic struggle.

“The way the Nigerian democratic space is rapidly shrunken can only be imagined under a military government. The determination and resilience of Nigerians is being called to question under the current APC government led by President Tinubu,” Lukman noted.

The former APC chieftains said the leaders of the coalition were committed to providing the needed leadership to rescue Nigerian democracy.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting until we get to 2027 only to discover that Nigerians have been smouldered into a legal knock out. Related to this is also the worrisome reality whereby rule of law is being tested in ways that are threatening to democratic development of the country,” he said.