A former political adviser to President Bola Tinubu in the office of the Vice President, and prominent member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has stated that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is unlikely to approve the newly proposed political party by the opposition coalition.
According to Ahmed, INEC has not registered any new political party in a long time, and only a miracle would make it approve the registration of the newly proposed political party.
Naija News reports that he made the submission on Monday during an interview with Arise News in which he spoke about the application to INEC by the opposition coalition to register a new political party known as the All Democratic Alliance (ADA) ahead of the 2027 general elections.
“Unless a miracle happens, they [ADA] forget that there are a huge number of applications before INEC, and INEC has not registered any party for a long time,” Baba-Ahmed said.
He argued that INEC may appear biased if it singles out the application for ADA among the many applications before it and grants approval.
“I do not know how it will look if INEC now singles out an application that has come because it has at the bottom of it names of prominent politicians and says, ‘Look, we have to prioritise this.’ INEC will put itself in a very difficult situation, and Nigerians will not be impressed,” he added.
Baba-Ahmed, however, reasoned with the arguments for the proposal by the coalition to register a new party instead of adopting an existing party, which may cause frictions between old and new members.
Despite his argument, the prominent northern politician pointed out that the political and legal technicalities involved in forming a new party could prove insurmountable.
“The technical element of creating a new party just to simply make a level playing field for everyone to feel comfortable, ‘we are not going into another party where we have to comply with certain requirements we are not comfortable with, we are not going to somebody’s party where we will be treated as tenants rather than shareholders’, that is going to be very difficult and challenging.”
“INEC, of course, has other options. If they come under pressure and feel, ‘Look, we need to register this party,’ for whatever reason, they can register about 20 parties that will include the new one with the big guys. They cannot cherry-pick. They have to worry about the law regarding the registration of parties,” Baba-Ahmed stated.
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