Court Orders INEC to deregister ADC, Accord, Three Other Political Parties
The Federal High Court in Abuja has directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister five political parties over their failure to meet constitutional requirements for continued recognition. The affected parties are the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Accord Party (AP), Action Peoples Party (APP), Action Alliance (AA), and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP). The ruling was delivered on Monday by Justice Peter Lifu in a suit filed by the National Forum of Former Legislators, which challenged the continued registration of the parties despite what it described as their poor electoral performance. In the suit, the plaintiffs asked the court to determine whether INEC was under a constitutional obligation to deregister political parties that failed to satisfy the performance benchmarks outlined in Section 225A of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), as well as relevant provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 and INEC’s regulations. The former lawmakers argued that the five po...