By MBACHU GODWIN, Abuja
African Democratic Congress, ADC, has flagged of its membership Revalidation and Registration exercise to strengthen the party ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Flagging off the exercise, yesterday, in Abuja, the party’s National Chairman, Sen. David Mark, urged the Committee constituted for the exercise to be transparent in its conduct and ensure that every member who want to be registered is fully registered, charging it to resist the temptation of excluding any member.
He warned the committee members not to hijack the cards and store them in their rooms.
“What we’re kicking off today is laying a solid foundation for our future results in the ADC. Once you get the cards and you start the exercise, register anybody who wants to be a member of ADC. I know what they do in other political parties. Somebody will buy the cards and keep them in his room.
“Our cards will not be kept in the rooms. Our cards will be given to our members. One person will take the whole cards and they will be giving it to you on piecemeal basis. Or some people will come and say, well, you are not my friend, you don’t belong to us. You will not vote for this man.
“For ADC, it is our card, for all ADC members. Whether you are our friend or you are our enemy, as long as you want to register with us and as long as you abide by our do’s and don’t s, we’ll give you our cards.
“All I want to assure you is that ADC is a new bride in town. Everybody, anywhere you go to, people want to join ADC. They clamor for them to get the cards. People have been saying, where are your cards? Where are your cards? The cards are out now, so we’ll see what happens. I assure you that in 2027, ADC will form the government and this is the foundation for that we need. This is the foundation that we are laying today. So I want to thank you for being here on schedule and I want to appreciate your presence here”, he said
While speaking, chairman of the committee, Alhaji Imam Ibrahim, said the exercise will be conducted both manually and online, adding that 50,000 cards will be distributed to states. He revealed that 33 states committee chairmen, including the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, were inaugurated , excluding , Osun, Ekiti that had issues.
“We thought of developing websites and we felt that at a point websites will a crushed. We also thought of developing an app and we felt that at a point many people don’t want to buy an app or download an app just for party registration. So we came up with what we call web app.
So within this period we have been able to ensure that the cards for registration are ready. We have decided on interim because we are putting it on demand. We are not going to give out cards to be kept there and they will not be used.
“We are putting on demand and on interim we have said that we are going to give each state 50,000 cards from today so that you go and register because we want a platform where the manual registration goes alongside the online registration.
Graciously the National Chairman and National Working Committee have given their approval for this to go that’s why we are here today. So we are here to demonstrate these two platforms. One the online registration and one the manual registration which is very important because internet penetration is a little bit low.
So we don’t want to disenfranchise anybody. We have opened the platform for everybody and anybody who wants to be a member of the African Democratic Congress to get registered”
Meanwhile, a member of the party’s Board of Trustees, BOT, High Chief Godson Okoye, has expressed confidence in the committee in discharging their assignment transparently.
Okoye, who charged the Committee to brace up to the challenge of registering many Nigerians who are hungry of joining the ADC , urged them not to disenfranchise any person willing to join the party.
He noted that ADC was been repositioned to dislodge the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2027 general elections and urged Nigerians to take advantage of the membership Revalidation and Registration exercise to embrace the party.
