The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it recorded over 1,689 court cases as a result of the 2019 general election.

Mohammed Haruna, INEC National Electoral Commissioner in charge of Niger, Kogi, and Nasarawa states, said this on Thursday in Lafia during the state level post-election review retreat.

Haruna said more than 890 of the cases were pre-election matters arising from the conduct of political party primary elections, while 799 were election petitions at the various tribunals across the country.

According to him, the pre-election cases indicate that political parties need to put their acts together in order to deepen the nation’s democratic process. He also said that the cases before the election petitions tribunals showed that much still needed to be done to improve on the electoral process.

“We are here to review what we did for this year’s general election with a view to improving on our subsequent outing. You will agree with me that any document is work in progress, you can never get it perfectly,” Haruna said.

Haruna cited the unprecedented number of political parties that participated in the 2019 general election as one of the challenges that the commission faced during the conduct of the polls.  In his remarks, Uthman Ajidagba, Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, said that 26 cases were recorded in the state from the 2019 general election.