Akande Dismisses APC Membership Validation, Registration as a Wasteful Exercise

Akande Dismisses APC Membership Validation, Registration as a Wasteful Exercise

By Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja and Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

A former Interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has described the party’s Caretaker and Extra-Ordinary Convention Committee as an abnormality, adding that the party’s ongoing registration and revalidation are an indefensible aberration.

Akande during the commencement of the party’s registration and revalidation in Ila Orangun, Osun State, warned the National Caretaker and Extra-ordinary Convention Committee, led by the Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni, against perpetuating itself in office.

He urged the committee to resist all temptations of sit-tight syndromes that usually characterised most handpicked authorities in most underdeveloped countries of the world.

The caretaker committee was inaugurated June 25, 2020 following the sacking of the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC).

Akande stated that political party register, as distinct from population census or voters register, is supposed to include the list of opinion leaders with a particular ideological orientation.

He added that he felt humbled to have been honoured with a singular privilege of presiding over the creation of the original register of the ruling party.

He said he was also proud and happy that the original party register so created was the foundation of all the structures that stimulated the movement that pushed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) out of power.

He warned that the next national election to elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari is going to be the most important test of the ongoing APC membership registration and whatever structure is being envisaged to be imposed on it.

Akande said: “The first is that, in normal circumstances, a caretaker executive committee for a political party is an abnormality. If not carefully controlled and expeditiously managed, most aberrant authorities end up in contempt and disgrace.

“For this reason, I want to urge the present APC caretaker executive committee to resist all temptations of sit-tight syndromes that usually characterised most handpicked authorities in most underdeveloped countries of the world.

“The second is to say that no population census is repeated within less than a decade and that voters are not reregistered at every election. Within this context, I see the present APC membership registration within less than a decade after the original register as an indefensible leading to certain ugly perceptions.”

Akande explained that the first perception was that APC, already having a well computerised register for an average of 100 leaders of similar ideological orientation per each of the more than 120,000 polling units across Nigeria, might be lacking comprehension and matrix of the modern day technology.

He noted that the second major perception was that APC leadership might be “wasteful and unappreciative” of the proper use of money in a kind of scanty economy in which Nigeria now finds itself.

Akande added: “These seeming ugly perceptions put into abeyance the applause of the two national election successes that the original APC register enjoyed since its completion on 15th February, 2014 and the over N1 billion of 2014’s value that the original register cost when APC had no money of its own.”

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