Membership registration, central to rebuilding APC says Buni

By Tunde Opalana

Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, Governor Mai Mala Buni has said the planned membership registration is vital to rebuilding the party, Daily Times gathered.

In a statement in Abuja on Thursday, Mala Buni who is the governor of Your state said the registration is imperative for repositioning the party.

Buni acknowledged that revalidation of old register and fresh registration if members are a popular demand by stakeholders in the party across geopolitical zones in the country.

He disclosed that during our interactions with stakeholders across the country since assumption of office, the need to update and standardise membership registration has become a recurring decimal.

“For obvious reasons, we are not surprised that many stakeholders are of the view that the inability of our party to put in place a working structure for continuous membership register updates and new membership drive is a major factor in some of the conflicts that have caused our party major losses in multiple states and in a number of elections.

“Since the 2014 post-merger membership registration and the inconclusive registration updates of 2017, our party has not been able to produce a comprehensive membership register. During the last five years since our party emerged as the governing party, we have lost members due to either death or defection.

“We have also received many new members into our party. In all cases, our membership register does not currently reflect these changes.  This laxity and the challenging consequences have brought into focus the imperative for our party to immediately embark on this exercise”.

Towards achieving this, he said the Caretaker Committee has engaged with party leaders across the country including President Muhammadu Buhari on the imperative for the exercise as a major pillar for sustainable political harmony and a precursor to developing the capacity to continue to deliver political victories for APC for many years to come.

Speaking further, the Chairman said “it is on this note that our committee is now embarking on a nationwide membership registration and revalidation of the current membership register.

“We are soon to roll out massive publicity and stakeholders’ engagement processes to mobilise our members nationwide to ensure full participation and a successful outcome.

“We are working hard and speedily to deliver on our mandate even when we understand the need to put a sustainable structure in place towards conducting a credible national convention to usher in a new National Working Committee (NWC)”.

The committee solicited the cooperation of all members to ensure a smooth and transparent registration exercise while promising that the committee will continue to provide update of the process on regular basis and do all that is necessary to strengthen the party and deliver a cohesive political structure at the end of its assignments.

On the progress so far made by the committee, Buni said “since the assumption of office on June 25, 2020, the Caretaker Committee has been working to pull our party away from the crisis in the party by prioritising reconciliation at all levels.

“It has been a painstaking responsibility, which requires every effort to be invested to bring down tempers and ensure that some sanity returned to the party. The process of reconciliation is yielding a lot of positive results and is ongoing.

“We have embarked on our assignments with clear focus, knowing that our actions or inactions could make or mar the chances of our party, first, to survive and be stable and second, to have the capacity to compete in the national political landscape.

“This has been our preoccupation and we are confronting our tasks with every caution, patriotic zeal and the milestones we have accomplished within this short period bear bold testimony to our single-mindedness and dedication.

“Our immediate task of resolving the various conflicts across the states have been largely successful.  In many of the flashpoints, we have been able to either resolve the conflict or douse the tension, while we continue to make efforts at bringing about an atmosphere that encourages peace and unity of purpose”.

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