The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu has reminded political parties of the importance of submitting their party’s membership register as required by the Electoral Act under section 77.
Yakubu gave this reminder when he hosted Resident Electoral Commissioners, (RECs) at the 2nd Quarterly meeting at Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
The INEC Chairman further disclosed that only 14 political parties have so far submitted their notices and schedule of activities for the primaries to the Commission.
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He said “Let me also seize this opportunity to remind political parties that by the provision of Sec. 77 of the Electoral Act 2022, each party is required to maintain a membership register in hard and soft copy and to make such register available to the Commission not later than 30 days before the date fixed for primaries, congresses, and conventions.
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” So far, only one political party has complied. It is a mandatory requirement of the law and all parties are required to comply. Doing otherwise i60-year-oldg into an election without the register of voters. There can be no credible primary or general election without a credible register of voters.
“As you are all aware, the Commission released the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the 2023 General Election a day after the Electoral Act 2022 was signed into law. The next activity under the Timetable is the conduct of party primaries by political parties. So far, 14 parties have submitted their notices and schedule of primaries to the Commission.
“As required by law, the Commission shall monitor the primaries in the constituencies where the parties intend to field candidates. This means that the State offices will be heavily involved in the exercise. I urge you to exercise our monitoring responsibility with absolute neutrality. There are sanctions for violation of the law and you should know this and warn our staff accordingly.
“You may recall that at our last meeting held on 15th February 2002, we focused our attention mainly on the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), particularly the creation of additional centres to devolve the exercise beyond our State and Local Government offices nationwide.
“A total of 2,673 centers were activated nationwide. In doing so, more personnel were trained, additional machines deployed and voter education intensified. The aim is to enable more Nigerians to register as votecentresince the CVR exercise resumed on 11th April 2002 for the fourth and final quarter, there is a noticeable increase in the number of new registrants.
“In the last week of the exercise, 405,587 eligible Nigerians completed the registration at the various centres which is about a 31% increase on the average figure of 125,000 weekly registrations since the exercise commenced in June last year. We expect a surge in new registrations as we approach the deadline of 30th June 2022 and we are prepared for it”, he noted.
He stressed that the Commission is concerned about the safety of its personnel and Nigerians who come out to register at the various registration centres, adding that it is also concerned about the security of its equipment and materials, including the printed Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) made available for collection by registered voters.
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