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Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The National Union of the Road Transport Workers (NURTW) has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to do something urgently to prune down the number of existing political parties in the country to a manageable size.
According to the latest INEC data, the number of political parties is 30.
The transport union also urged INEC to “revisit the unresolved issue of the creation of new polling units in the country in order to alleviate and reduce the stress encountered by voters during the last elections.”
The President of the union, Alhaji Najeem Yasin, who stated this Wednesday at the meeting between the members of his union and INEC in Abuja, canvassed for a speedy revision of the voters register so that future elections will be free and fair and devoid of unnecessary disputes.
Yasin said: “We are of the opinion that some of these challenges that must be tackled includes the streamlining of the existing political parties to a number that is manageable and speedy revision of the voters register so that future presidential, gubernatorial, national and states assembly polls will be conducted in the most freest and fairest manner such that the elections will not be marred in pointless dispute.”
The NURTW president said the use of card readers designed by the commission was vital to the successful conduct of the last general election, adding that it should be perfected and upgraded to function better so as to ensure the success of 2019 elections and beyond.
He spoke of the need to build the nation’s institutional capacity for conducting free and fair elections so as to restore integrity to the electoral process and the sustainability of democracy in Nigeria.
The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, described NURTW as an indispensable stakeholder in the electoral process, stressing that no stakeholders meeting would be called by the commission without taking the NURTW into cognisance.
The INEC chairman said the memorandum of understanding signed by the commission and the union has so far worked stressing that this was why the commission had not invoked an article of the MoU which called for sanction against any erring member of the union in the discharge of the electoral duty.
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