60 new political parties have applied for registration, says INEC

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

Rotimi Oyekanmi, chief press secretary to the chairman of the commission, disclosed this at a capacity development workshop organised by INEC.

There are 40 political parties in Nigeria. 10 of them were recently registered by INEC following court orders.

Oyekanmi said 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 of Thursday December 15, 60 associations have approached the commission to be registered,” he said.

“Their applications are presently being attended to and they are in different level of processing.”

Oyekanmi added that another eight groups had also approached the commission inquiring on the process of applying for registration.

Commenting on information and communication technology deployed for elections, Oyekanmi said the commission was working on some value adding projects in order to improve the country’s electoral process.

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