The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that the number of political parties that participated in the 2019 general elections was too much, hence caused a lot of logistics problem.
This was made known by Mohammed Haruna, the National Commissioner in charge of Kwara, Kogi and Nasarawa States, said on Saturday in Ilorin while speaking with journalists.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that INEC organised a workshop in Kwara to review the 2019 general elections.
The National Commissioner further revealed that there were 799 litigations from the 2019 general elections in the whole of the country.
The only state free from the petition is Jigawa while Kwara had only three petitions but Imo state had the highest number with 77 petitions.
“So you can see that with these kinds of problems we had, there is really a need to look at the number of political parties.
“We really need to do something about the 91 political parties, not just the quantity which generally speaking the public have begun to complain that 93 political parties are on the high side,” he added.
76 political parties participated in the Presidential election, and according to him, that was a huge source of the serious logistics problem for the commission.
“We underestimated the kind of logistical problem that implied the size of the ballot papers, result sheets and so on.
“By the time these materials started arriving, we realise that it was a huge logistical problem.
“We are lucky, we had the Nigerian Air Force to help with the movement of the materials, they have always been helping us,” he said.
The commissioner also asked that the Electoral Act and the Constitution be reviewed to curb the increasing number of political parties.
