Yobe State Governor and Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) caretaker committee, Mai Mala Buni, has described the on-going membership registration exercise of the party as a constitutional and strategic exercise.
Pioneer national chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, had on Wednesday described the exercise as “an indefensible aberration and a waste of resources”.
But Buni, in a statement on Thursday by his Director-General, Press and Media Affairs, Mamman Mohammed, argued that the exercise would assist the party to generate a valid, accurate and up-to-date data on party membership to enhance and support its planning process.
Buni also said it was diversionary to discuss 2023 general elections now, adding that the party was committed to reconciling aggrieved members and driving its membership through the on-going exercise.
“Since the initial exercise in 2014, the party has not registered new members nor updated the personal information of our existing members as provided for by the constitution.
“The registration exercise gives our new members a sense of belonging and the existing members will update their information while those who left the party will have their names removed from the party register,” he said.
Similarly, the National Woman Leader of the party, Stella Okotete, has urged Nigerian women to embrace the membership registration and revalidation exercise.
Also, the Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Senator George Akume, has urged stakeholders of the party in Benue State to mobilise their communities massively for the party’s membership registration/revalidation exercise.
Akume, who made the remark during the expanded stakeholders’ meeting of the APC in Makurdi, also emphasised the need for old members to revalidate their registration and new members to register at their council wards.
The minister noted the need for a comprehensive database that will guide party decisions and boost its electoral chances. He also called for transparency in handling the registration exercise and encouraging all party members to be adequately involved in all stages of the process.
Meanwhile, the Ogun State APC Concerned Group has made a clarion call to the Presidency and Buni to save the party in the state.
The group’s spokesman, Comrade Olusola Makinde, in a statement, said the intervention of the party leaders at the national level was needed to halt the crisis in the state chapter.
“It’s very imperative and germane that conscious efforts are made to reconcile all the warring groups within the APC in the state as failure to do this will spell doom for the party,” he said.
In its reaction, the PDP has described the exercise as a scam. The party, in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, said: “Nigerians are already aware that the purpose of the APC membership exercise is to produce inflated membership figures to assist the APC to allocated fictitious votes for itself in the 2023 elections; a scheme that is dead on arrival.”
By Saawua Terzungwe, Hamisu Kabir Matazu (Abuja), Victor Sorokwu Asaba, Peter Moses (Abeokuta) & Hope Abah Emmanuel (Makurdi)
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