16th March 2024

By; Adebayo Folorunsho-Francis

The ruling All Progressives Congress has disclosed that the nationwide electronic registration of its members has received the blessing of President Bola Tinubu.

This was disclosed by the National Chairman of APC, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, when he hosted 33 members of the APC state chairmen at the headquarters of the party in Abuja on Saturday.

The visitation comes hours after the Forum of APC Chairmen urged the President to ‘wield the big stick’ against heads of security agencies found wanting in the fight against insecurity and banditry.

While welcoming the delegation, Ganduje disclosed that the President is happy with the performance of the state chairmen and further endorsed the e-registration of members to further consolidate its membership strength ahead of the 2027 general elections.

He said, “This is a very important courtesy call you made to Mr President. He is so happy with it. And it will continue like this. The president has granted your requests, especially on political appointments. He is doing something about it.

“He emphasized the importance of electronic registration which we have been working on with the consultant and our committee at the headquarters which has gone far. Now, we are going to the grassroots level. It (registration) will be connected across all the wards of the federation but you need to oversee the recruitment of officials who will undertake the exercise. This is because you are involved in the recruitment and in the execution of the registration.”

His position was re-echoed by the Deputy National Organising Secretary of the party, Nze Chidi Duru, who explained to the delegation that two officials from each state would be trained in Abuja to consolidate on the recruitment for the exercise.

Reacting, Secretary of the forum, Alphonsus Ogah applauded both Tinubu and Ganduje for bringing stability to the party and Nigeria as a country.

Tinubu okays e-registration of APC members
While stating that they passed a vote of confidence on the president after charging him not to spare any security chief failing in his duty, Ogah also stressed the importance of updating the party membership register.

According to the APC chieftain, the 2023 elections exposed the actual membership, unlike the 40 million membership strength the party has been dangling prior to the poll.

He said, “We also wasted no time in telling Mr President that our party needs to be strengthened. And in strengthening our party, we need to thank Mr President for giving us a man in the mode of our national chairman, Dr Umar Ganduje, who has been so humble in consulting state chairmen on every policy, particularly the planned e-registration of membership of our party.

“Our national chairman came very prepared. He was focused on doing away with the rigmarole and the delusion that APC paraded 41 million people when in reality, we went into an election we barely got almost nine million votes. It is time to face reality because we have a President and a national chairman who are both progressive. You have state chairmen who are also progressively minded.

“Therefore we will be more comfortable if today we know we have 10 million registered members in APC. But we must match them with their PVCs so we can be able to make a prognostication on what may likely be the outcome of an election even before 2027.

“But in doing this, we reminded Mr President that we have been working with our governors and various stakeholders to collate names of party faithful. It was also the mantra of Mr President that monkey work, monkey chop.

“Baboon no work, baboon no chop. In fact, Mr President had told us in one of those meetings that if he caught a baboon that didn’t work coming to eat, he was personally going to arrest that baboon. There were other various sensitive issues we discussed with Mr President and I can assure you he was highly elated.”