Agency Report,

All 18 presidential candidates on the final list released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have cases instituted against them in the courts, the electoral umpire said yesterday.

The Commission blamed the political parties for not observing internal democracy in the nomination of their candidates.

INEC made the observations at the close of a two-day capacity-building workshop on its processes, innovation and preparations for the 2023 general elections and critical issues in the Electoral Act 2022 in Lagos.

It said that the development was not good for the electoral process.

Acknowledging said that the nomination of candidates remained internal affair for political parties’, INEC said it has the obligation to monitor the procedure to ensure compliance with the extant laws.

The Commission decried the refusal of major political parties, including the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to furnish it with their audited account for years.

It expressed concern that only nine of the 73 registered political parties that contested the 2019 general election legally complied with the directives on the audit of their accounts.

The Commission revealed that while 34 political parties submitted their audited accounts, only nine complied with the statutory requirement of submission of accounts with the affidavit.

Asked whether the big political parties complied, the commission replied: “None of the big parties has complied. Out of the 73 registered political parties that contested the 2019 general elections, only 34 submitted their audited account while only nine fulfilled the statutory obligation of submitting the report with an affidavit.

“The good thing is that the commission has concluded arrangements to start the process of auditing the accounts of all the political parties in the past five years. We have dispatched letters to that effect and it will commence.”