The Traffic

BY SEGUN ADEBAYO 

Hoping to improve the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s fortunes ahead of the 2027 general elections, the National Secretary of the ruling party, Senator Ajibola Basiru, has admitted that the party flaunted fake membership figures during the 2023 polls.

According to him, the 2023 elections exposed these fraudulent numbers as the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now the President, struggled and scored less than 10 million votes, despite claims that the Party had 45 million registered members nationwide.

Senator Basiru was referring to submissions by the then Governor Mai Mala Buni-led APC National Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee that embarked on a membership registration/revalidation exercise in 2021, and after that announced the registration of over 40 million party members.

The APC National Scribe, who spoke at the train-the-trainer workshop on e-registration of APC members flag-off in Abuja on Wednesday, said; “If we have that membership of 45 million, how come we went to the poll and got votes of less than 10 million? In line with Amilcar Cabral’s doctrine of ‘tell no lies, claim no easy victories’, that has exhumed the lie.

“In exposing that, it is not to ridicule anybody. It is to know that when a child falls, he will look at the front. But when an elder falls, he will look back to see where he made a mistake. We made a mistake because the register of the party was a tool for fighting causes we don’t know. The weaponisation of the party register led to corruption.

“It was on this basis that the National Working Committee (NWC) decided that one of the cardinal programmes would be to have a digitalised and biometric-based registration system that is linked with the National Identification Number (NIN) of all members.”

Stressing the importance of this registration to the ruling party, the National Secretary said;  “This is an exercise we must take with all seriousness to ensure we have a register conducted with integrity.”

Also addressing participants at the workshop, the APC National Chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, said only those on the e-register would be eligible to contest elections or secure appointments after the exercise.

The immediate past Kano state Governor further stated thus; “This process will not only drive the planning, decision-making, and projection process but will also serve as the basis of reference for any member of our party seeking appointment at any level or desiring to contest an election”.