By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: The ruling All Progressives Congress APC has said it would no longer delude itself with postulations by some of its past leaders that it has over 40 million members, even when it got less than nine million votes in the last presidential election, saying ahead if its forthcoming membership registration, only those with Permanent Voter Cards PVCs would be admitted.
Saying those without PVCs would be registered after they had gotten their voter cards, the party said the measure was necessary in order to be able to make realistic political prognostication in the lead-up to the 2027 general election.
Chairman of APC in Cross River state and Secretary, Forum of APC State Chairmen in Nigeria, Barr. Alphonsus Ogah disclosed this after a meeting with the National Chairman of the party, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje in Abuja.
The chairmen had earlier on Friday held a meeting with President Bola Tinubu.
Ganduje who described the meeting as very important said the president has granted the requests of the chairmen, especially with regards to political appointments.
He said; “This is a very important courtesy call you made on Mr President. He is so happy with it and it will continue like this.
“He has granted your requests especially on political appointments. He is doing something about it.
“He emphasized the issue of electronic registration which we have been working with the consultant and our committee at the headquarters have gone far. Now, we are going to the grassroots level. It will be connected across the wards of the Federation but you need to understand the recruitment of officials or personnel who will undertake the exercise because you are involved in the recruitment and you are involved in the execution of the registration”.
Membership Registration
Oga who also spoke about the meeting with the president said Ganduje’s approach to leading the party has been very consultative, even with regards to membership registration.
He said; “Ganduje is a man who has been so humble consulting state chairmen in every policy particularly the planned e-registration of members of our party.
“Our National Chairman came very prepared. He was focused in doing away with the phantasmagoria and the delusion of APC parading 41 million people when in reality we went into an election where we barely got almost 9 million votes.
“It is time to face the reality because we have a president who is a progressive. We have a national chairman who is a progressive. You have state chairmen who are very progressive minded, and therefore, we will be most comfortable if today we know we have 10 million registered members in APC but we must match them with their PVCs. If you don’t have any PVC, we would wait until the time you get your PVCs to now register with us so that we can match your registration with the PVC and we will be able to make a prognostication on what can be the outcome of an election even before 2027”.
On the visit to the president, the forum explained its call for the sack of non-performing security chiefs, alleging that some persons are out to distract him.
Ogah said; “We took the opportunity too to speak on some very important national issues. We aligned ourselves with the efforts of the economic reforms being made by Mr President, but we didn’t lose sight of letting the president know that as good as these economic reforms are, we are concerned about the insecurity in Nigeria. We are concerned about the hunger and hardship and therefore it was a moment for us too to commend Mr President because we all agreed and you too will agree, that this country is on a voyage, it would have been thrown into oblivion if subsidy was not removed, and if the floating of the Naira which through another name you can comfortably called subsidy on dollar, were not replaced by Mr President. The reality of this reforms today is only the headway that can give us light in this country and we wasted no time in commending Mr President on that.
“We made it very clear to Mr President that no reasonable person will expect him as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to take up arms and go round the crannies of Nigeria to fight the criminal elements, bandits, kidnappers and armed robbers. And that is why the constitution of Nigeria has created the security agencies saddled with this responsibility.
“We commended the efforts and contributions of Mr President in terms of moral boost, financial support for equipment procurement and all others. The only added advice we brought to him was that people at the forefront should be held accountable and we were very firm but with absolute humility in telling Mr President that district police officers, or divisional police officers, Commissioners of police, SSS, or anybody in the front line of fighting and combating crime who is either lukewarm, taciturn, reticent in being pugnacious should please be shown the way out.
“It was therefore a call on Mr President to wield the big stick on those who are not ready to help him because we have come to the conclusion that some persons are out to distract Mr President and some persons are out to put this party in bad light.
“So, whatever efforts Mr President is making would be beclouded by the nefarious activities of these bandits and vandals, and we think the time has come for Mr President to say enough is enough”.
On the request for political patronage, he said the president pledged that the era of “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” was over and that he threatened to arrest such “baboons”.
“We also reminded Mr President that we have worked with our governors. We have worked with our various stakeholders to collate names of party faithful and 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 catches a baboon that didn’t work coming to eat, he was personally going to arrest that baboon. We reminded Mr President about that”, he added.