The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has assured the integrity of its membership register, and would ensure that only real people are registered and properly documented.
At the flag off of membership registration exercise in Abuja on Thursday, ADC said every name must belong to a real person, and every person must be documented, verified, and accounted for.
“This is not bureaucracy; this is the architecture of trust,” the party stated.
ADC National Chairman, Senator David Mark, said the party is laying a solid foundation for the future, assuring that nobody would be denied registration.
“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 dos and don’ts, we will give you our cards.
“I know what they do in other political parties. Somebody will buy the cards and keep them in his room.
“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. Our cards will not be kept in the rooms.Our cards will be given to our members,” Mark asserted.
The former President of the Senate described ADC as a new bride in town, boasting that the party will form government at the federal level in 2027.
ADC National Secretary, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola advised the party to avoid the temptations of joining political parties that inflate their membership with phantom names, duplicate entries, and invented identities, just to project a strength they do not possess.
“The registers are fat, but the structures are hollow.
“We must not follow that path. We must resist—with every fibre of our conviction—the temptation to bloat our figures with imaginary people.
“It does not help us. It does not strengthen us. At the end of such an exercise, all we will have is a token register propped up by a weak structure—impressive on paper, powerless in practice,” the former Osun State governor advised.
Aregbesola stated that what matters for the ADC should be quality membership and not members who exist only as names in a database.
“We want conscious members—men and women who understand what this party stands for and are willing to work for it,” he added.
Chairman of ADC Membership Mobilisation, Revalidation and Registration Committee, Kashim Imam, disclosed that in the interim, the party is giving each state 50,000 cards for registration of prospective members.
Imam explained that the party is conducting both online and manual registration “because internet penetration is a little bit low.”
According to him, the reason is that the ADC does not 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,” he added.
Deputy Chairperson of the Committee, Aisha Yesufu who also doubles as Chairperson of the online registration, said the committee adopted web app for the online registration, to avoid hitches due to the number of people who might want to register.
She stated that the means of identification is voter’s identification number because “we have so many of our citizens who unfortunately do not have a NIN.”
Yesufu stated that the exercise is seamless, and would be completed within a minute or two, including passport photograph of the registrant.
“There is also a QR code on it. At any time you can always bring up the details of the person that is there,” she explained.
