The Acting National Chairman of the Coalition United Political Party (CUPP), Peter Ameh, has questioned the deregistration of political parties by the Federal High Court in Abuja, saying that no democracy in the world operates on a two-party system.
Ameh stated this on Thursday during an interview.
“There is no democracy in the world that operates on two parties. In 2012, the INEC went ahead to deregister some parties even while the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) chairman was still on the seat Shittu Mohammed and some members went to court; the court reversed it,” he said.
His remark came amid the order by Justice Peter Lifu to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister the African Democratic Party and four others over the failure to meet the constitutional requirement for political parties in the country.
The CUPP chieftain, however, commended the Appeal Court for ruling a stay of execution on the matter.
“I must commend the appeal court; it’s not the first time. In 2020, the appeal court didn’t stay within the jurisdiction of political parties. At the time, we had the INEC chairman, who was very hostile to multiparty democracy.
“I remember I had a meeting with Yakubu then, and when he talked about the deregistration, we discussed, and he insisted he was going to deregister our political party. We went to court at the Federal High Court, and there was a stay of execution.
“In spite of the stay of execution, he still went ahead to deregister the parties when we got to the Court of Appeal, and the Court of Appeal clearly states that what the commission did was clearly wrong and the parties should be returned without any delay, but INEC went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court took the decision further,” Ameh stated.
According to him, the court has not released the judgment to the public.
Ameh said, “Till today, that judgment has not been released to the public because the court knows that as soon as you stifle political participation and as soon as you start to reduce the level of inclusive drive from political participation, you will create a restrictive system that will not allow for proper engagement in the system.”
He questioned the decision of the Supreme Court, alleging that it wants to favour political decisions.
“Where all eyes should be now is at the Supreme Court because I think the Supreme Court tends to favour political decisions without looking at the law.
“If you look at what we have today, it is those whose parties are ADC, NDC and other parties; if the court had not intervened and people had promoted a two-party system, they wouldn’t have seen a party to use today.”
