The Independent National Electoral Commission has said that parties who do not have offices and leadership may not be allowed to contest the 2019 general elections Head of Department of Elections and Political Party Monitoring of INEC, Ibe U. Ibe, noted this during a visit to the Anambra State office of the Peoples Democratic Party in Awka on Thursday.
According to Ibe, "Our mission here is simple, because very soon we will be faced with more serious activities that will lead to the 2019 general elections.“INEC in Anambra State is doing a general assessment of all political parties that claim to be present in Anambra State.“If you say you are a political party in Anambra State, we want to know where your office is, the nature of your office.
"It is not enough to say we have offices, we want to see what that place looks like whether it is actually an office or somebody’s residence or business location, we want to be sure it is actually an office.“We also want to know the current officers of the party. We want to know when last you held your congress and when you will be holding the next one, so that at the end of the exercise we will be able to know who exactly are in Anambra State.
"So our visit this morning (Thursday) is in continuation of that exercise. We have visited about eight other parties last week and from today till Friday, we will be moving from office to office".