Date: 2019-06-16

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that a large number of political parties that participated in the 2019 general elections created a lot of logistics problem for the agency.

Malam Mohammed Haruna, the National Commissioner in charge of Kwara, Kogi and Nasarawa States, said this on Saturday in Ilorin while speaking with journalists.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that INEC organised a workshop in Kwara State to review the 2019 general elections.

According to the National Commissioner, there were 799 litigations from the 2019 general elections across the country.

He said that Jigawa had no petition from the election, Kwara had only three petitions and that Imo topped the list 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. Generally speaking, the public has begun to complain that 93 political parties are on the high side," he added.

He noted that 76 political parties contested for the Presidential election, adding that this was the source of some logistics problem that the commission had.

"We underestimated the kind of logistical problem to expect.

"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," Haruna said.

The commissioner said the Electoral Act and the Constitution have to be reviewed to curb the increasing number of political parties.

According to him, the Constitution and the Electoral Act made it easy for anybody to register a political party once the person has an office in Abuja and its executive officers that reflected the Federal Character.

Haruna said that the workshop was to review the 2019 general election to see what went wrong, and how to make sure that similar mistakes are not repeated in future elections.