P.M. News (Lagos)
Tony Orilade in Abuja
14 December 1998
Lagos — Three political parties got the approval of Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission this evening to field candidates for the remaining parts of Nigeria's democratic transition programme. The Parties are The Alliance for Democracy, AD, the People's Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Peoples Party, APP.
All the parties according to the chairman of the INEC, Justice Ephraim Akpata, had fulfilled the conditions for final registration. The three parties emerged ahead of six others in the council polls conducted on December 5, with run off done on 12 December.
Nine parties took part in the election. Justifying the final registration of the three parties, Justice Akpata said they were granted 'final registration by virtue of paragraph 12 (2) of the INEC guidelines for the registration of parties.
The guidelines says that "where only two provisionally registered political parties satisfy the requirement of sub-paragraph (3) of paragraph 10 of these guidelines, the commission shall register, along with the two provisionally registered political parties, the next provisionally registered political party which scored five per cent of the total votes cast in more states, including the FCT, than the others." The score-sheet of the parties, vis-a-vis the five per cent requirement released by INEC yesterday, shows that AD met the requirement in 14 states including the FCT; PDP 37 states including Abuja while APP met the requirement in 36 states, including the FCT. With this, the other parties: DAM, MDJ, NSM, PRP, UDP and UPP ceased to exist as parties.
INEC, however, pointed out that any candidate elected on the platform of a political party, which failed to gain full registration, shall remain validly elected on the platform of that party and complete his tenure.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 1998 P.M. News. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
