INEC monitoring, verification of parties: End of an era for briefcase parties

EMEKA NZE writes on the visit of the INEC’s department of Election and Party Monitoring to the Nigerian Community Movement Party (NCMP) and the era of briefcase parties 

INEC and monitoring mandate

The Election and Party Monitoring Department of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last week continued with its constitutional mandate to verify the claims of political parties and ascertain their existence otherwise. 

Part of the law creating the political parties entails that each political party must have its headquarters in Abuja. It is also the duty of INEC officials to routinely monitor the parties it registered to ascertain whether the parties are truly in existence or not.  

As has been noticed over the years, however, that most of the parties at creation, rent offices in plazas and shopping complexes which they maintain for a while mostly as the momentum of political contests gear up.  

Some of these rented offices are relinquished immediately after an election year leaving them in breach of the section of the law which requires them to own their headquarters in Abuja. 

Many of parties in this category are the ones which cannot and do not have the ability win of any political office. However, they sometimes they resurge as election year nears again by renewing their rent where the office space is still available or out rightly go for another office. The worst affected are the parties which never grow beyond the shadowy executives that registered them. 

INEC awake to its role

Political observers are of the opinion that this star of affairs held sway because INEC in the past, had shown less strictness in political party monitoring and verification and therefore the parties have operated shoddily without fulfilling the legal requirements for their registration. 

It is against this backdrop that observers see the latest effort by INEC to monitor and verify the continued existence of the parties as a step in the right direction.

Some aver that this latest step by the electoral umpire portends the beginning of the end of an era of briefcase political parties which pervaded our landscape and almost constitutibg nuisance.

NCMP first port of call

Last Thursday, the INEC monitoring train took it to Gwarimpa Housing Estate in the FCT where the office of the Nigeria Community Movement Party (NCMP) is located. 

The party office could have been mistaken for a residential area except for the Nigerian, party flags which dotted the front of the building.

Another characteristic of the political party is the restive crowd of members whose noise and shouting of party slogan intermittently rented the serene environment. They have gathered around the national chairman, Babatunde Ademola, as he granted interview to the press.

Although the INEC officials who undertook the assignment preferred to keep mum when pressmen approached them for comment and their impression of the party, it was an exercise which exposed that many young men and women are finding solace in some of the new parties.

Stakeholders must play its role

In his interview, Ademola, who doubles as the spokesman of the Inter Party Advisory Council, stated that achieving peaceful and credible election in Nigeria required all stakeholders, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) security agencies and political parties doing the right thing.

Ademola said while INEC still had much to do to improve the electoral system, stakeholders must play their roles in accordance to the rules and regulations guiding elections.

“In the history of our electoral processes, I have never read or seen INEC chairman or staff of the commission snatching or running away with ballot boxes.

”All I have seen or heard is  political members or supporters destroying and disrupting the electoral process in favour of one candidate or the other, which must stop.

“The security agencies need to be more empowered to discharge their responsibilities during elections without fear or favour,” Ademola said.

He also stressed the need for political parties to do the right thing and promote internal democracy that would reflect the true will of the people.

Lacuna in Nigeria’s election

Ademola said that 2019 general elections and the recent Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections had showed there were still lacuna in the Electoral Act and the country’s electoral processes.

“We have to start building a platform right now to solve these problems, especially the lives of Nigerians being lost during elections. It not every time we go into election that we should be killing ourselves.

“We have to look at how we can have electronic voting system, how we can improve the sensitisation process to make sure that the youths are not been used for electoral violence,” he said.

Ademola said that the political parties were doing their best to ensure that the country electoral processes become more credible and peaceful, including sponsoring of bills in the National Assembly.

He, however advised Nigerians to be more involved in active politics by being card carriers of registered political parties, if the process of chosen the leadership of the country must be refined.

Ademola appealed to citizens, both able and persons living with disabilities to read parties’ constitutions and their manifestoes join them to build standard parties that to change the narrative of leadership and question the integrity of governance in Nigeria.

“Don’t just be a political party supporter, be a card carrying member so that your voice can be lend to the system.

“We cannot continue to depend on average minority claiming one political party saying they are leading us. We need to support partisanship, join a political party, build it to a standard and use the structure to solve the problems of Nigeria.”

Ademola, who said that INEC team led by Mrs Adewon Bola, was at the party national secretariat to check it level of compliance to the Constitution and Electoral Act, expressed confidence that the party would meet up.

He said that the NCMP which was registered in 2018 now have over a million verifiable registered members with expanding structures across the federation, while it was it was strategising  to win elective positions in the future elections.

He stated that his party is in the process of registering 70 million citizens as card-carrying members of the party adding that the party would afford Nigerians the platform not only to participate in the electoral process, but also to ask for good governance.

He said if only a few people join the parties, so many Nigerians would not have the opportunity to contribute to development nor lobby for their various individual need and societal needs.

However, INEC delegation said they were not authorized to speak with press.

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