National Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Ajibola Basiru, has said the 2023 general elections exposed the party’s fake membership figure being paraded.
Speaking during the flag off of train-the-trainer workshop on e-registration of APC members, in Abuja, on Wednesday, Bashiru said during the 2023 elections, the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is now the President, struggled to scored less than 10 million votes, even though there were claims that the party had 45 million members.
The Governor Mai Mala Buni-led APC National Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee had embarked on membership registration/revalidation exercise in 2021, after which it announced that over 40 million party members were registered.
But on Wednesday, Bashiru 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.
“This is an exercise we must take with all seriousness to ensure we have a register conducted with integrity.”
The APC National Chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, in his speech, said only those on the e-register would be eligible to contest elections or secure appointments after the exercise.
“This process will not only drive the planning, decision-making and projection process but will serve as basis of reference for any member of our party seeking appointment at any level or desiring to contest an election,” Ganduje said.