The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, announced the deployment of its newly developed political party registration portal, following its successful internal testing and approval.

This is just as INEC received 10 additional letters of intent from groups seeking registration as political parties, bringing the total number of applications so far to 144.

National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, in a statement on Thursday, said the commission is currently reviewing their documents to determine which of the associations meet the criteria to advance to the formal application stage.

“The Commission is evaluating all the numerous letters of intent received so far to determine the associations that meet the requirements to proceed to the application stage. A report is expected at our next regular meeting,” the statement said.

INEC also confirmed that the registration portal was designed and built internally by its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Department.

Olumekun said, “In our last press release, we assured Nigerians that we were finalising the necessary tests on the party registration portal designed and built in-house by our ICT officials.

“As is the case with all our IT innovations, the new portal has been demonstrated before the Commission and approved for deployment.”

The commission added that details of the newly received applications, including the names, acronyms, logos, addresses, and interim leadership of the groups, have been published on its website and other platforms for public access.

“We will continue to update Nigerians on all our activities,”it added.