Ahead of the 2023 general elections, no fewer than 107 groups have approached the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for registration as political parties.
This comes less than two years after the commission deregistered 74 political parties due to their poor performance in the 2019 general elections.
The Deputy Director, SERVICOM at INEC, Olayide Okuonghae, who confirmed this, said between 2019 and December 14, 2021, about 101 political associations had applied for registration.
It was, however, gathered that most of these group have only submitted their letters of intent to be registered as political parties but have not met the minimum requirements for registration as a political party in Nigeria.
One of the conditions is that an association can only be said to have applied when such application is in the prescribed form.
The prescribed form is only issued after an association has received clearance on its proposed name, logo, acronym and address in Abuja and has also paid the required fee of N1m to obtain the form.
Currently, there are 18 political parties in the country.
The number of political parties in the country dropped to 18 when INEC deregistered some political parties in 2019.
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