Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja
Ahead of its forthcoming membership registration, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that only those with Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) will be admitted into the party.
It added that 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.
The Chairman of APC in Cross River state and Secretary of Forum of APC State Chairmen, Alphonsus Ogah disclosed this yesterday after a meeting with the National Chairman of the party, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje in Abuja.
He said: “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 added: “We took the opportunity too to speak on some very important national issues. We align 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 call subsidy on the dollar, were not replaced by Mr. President.
The reality of these 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.”
Ganduje who described the meeting as very important said the president had granted the requests of the chairmen, especially about 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 emphasised the issue of electronic registration, which we have been working on 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.”
