National Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Suraijudeen Ajibola Basiru, has admitted that his party falsified its membership strength in the build up to the 2023 general elections.
It would be recalled that the party under the leadership of Governor Mai Mala Buni boasted of 45 million members, but the Party gathered just above eight million votes during the presidential election.
In his remarks at the opening ceremony of APC e-membership registration train-the-trainer workshop held in Abuja on Wednesday, Ajibola confessed that Amilcar Cabral’s doctrine of ‘tell no lies, claim no easy victories’, has exhumed the lie.
The former Osun Central senator maintained that the exposure is not to ridicule anybody, but to know that; “when a child falls, he will look at the front. But when an elder falls, he will look back to see where he made mistake.”
According to him; “If we have that membership of 45 million, how come we went to poll and got votes of less than 10 million. In line with Amilcar Cabral’s doctrine of ‘tell no lies, claim no easy victories’, that has exhumed the lie.
“In exposing that, it is not to ridicule anybody. It is to know that when a child falls, he will look at the front. But when an elder falls, he will look back to see where he made mistake.
“We made a mistake because the registers of the party were tools for fighting causes we don’t know. Weaponisation of party register led to corruption. It was on this basis that the National Working Committee decided that one of the cardinal progammes will be to have a digitalized and biometric-based registration system that is linked with the National Identification Number of all members,” he noted.
Commenting on the registration, Basiru said: “I am glad to say this effort is coming with a vision at this important programme to ‘Train the Trainers’ to ensure that the work is done. Also, knowledge is very essential to leadership.
“One of the leadership visions of the National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, was to establish a progressive institute to be the engine room of ideological incubation of future generation of leaders and to sharpen the edges of our manifesto.
“I am here to tell you that the institute has been registered with the CAC and relevant documents obtained.
“This is an exercise we must take with all seriousness to ensure we have a register conducted with integrity,” he said.
