We have received 60 applications for new parties – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said that 60 associations have applied to the commission to be registered as political parties in the country.

The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, disclosed this at a Capacity Development Workshop organised by the electoral commission for the press corps which ended on Saturday in Abuja.

Ten political parties were recently registered by INEC following court orders to bring the number of political parties in Nigeria to 40.

Oyekanmi said that the applications were at various levels of processing by the commission.

“Presently we have 40 political parties in the country. I can tell you that as at Thursday Dec. 15, 60 associations have approached the commission to be registered.

“Their applications is presently being attended to and they are in different level of processing,’’ Oyekanmi said.

The chief press secretary added that another eight groups had also approached the commission inquiring on the process of applying for political party’s registration.

Commenting on Information and Communication Technology deployed for elections by INEC, Oyekanmi said that the commission was working on some value adding projects in order to improve the country’s electoral process.

He said that the projects developed by the department were expected to be launched in 2017.

One of the projects, according to him, included voter registration transfer portal; a centralised system that handle transfer of voters from one polling unit to another.

Others were voter verification portal, integrated voter register portal, and e-based Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) collection directional portal that provides useful information to the public on how to collect their PVC’s.