Audacious APC targets over 36 million card-carrying members ahead 2023 general election

In a move that is considered both audacious and strategic, the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) has rolled out additional 24 million registration forms and membership cards for old and new members.

The move is intended to douse the rash of tension and agitation that has engulfed the party  amid suspicion that some ambitious groups who are targeting the biggest pie in 2023 may have decided to exclude known opponents in the process.

The first tranche of 12 million registration forms and membership cards, as believed, was perfected to be mopped up by some forces for their members in a calculated bid to control the party’s governance structure right from the unit and ward levels.

With the uproar about inadequacy of cards that has characterised the exercise so far, it is clear that the APC’s market is booming and has the potentialities to absorb over 36 million members.

If 12 million registration forms have been exhausted in one week and there are widespread complaints that the 100 forms per unit were grossly insufficient, it becomes easier to make a prognosis that given the increasing daily momentum, the additional 24 million forms may be exhausted sooner before the end of second week of the exercise.

The registration and revalidation exercise began in most states on Tuesday, February 9.  Baring any change(s) in schedule, the exercise will end on February 27.

The registration is ongoing in 119,973 polling units countrywide.

The National Secretariat of the party in Abuja, as confirmed, has dispatched  additional 200 registration forms per each unit nationwide. The forms, according to sources close to the development, were dispatched on Tuesday.

This is expected to take care of the pressure that the upsurge in the number of old  members and new entrants into the party is generating.

Should the complaints about insufficiency of forms continue after now, then two possible scenarios may be pinpointed: either a genuine groundswell in the membership strength of the new APC is at work; or if not, then the figure is bogus, in which case, sabotage of form-mopping is implicated.

Indeed, a vast majority of APC members believe that the release of addition 24 million is to address the shortfall in the first deployment of forms in many States. If this is the dominant spirit in the APC, then the opposition parties have got something to worry about in 2023.

Chairman National Registration Committee of the party, Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, had last Thursday told newsmen at the party Secretariat that his committee had been receiving complaints of shortage of registration forms in virtually all the states of the federation.

Read him: “The registration is going on well. I have been receiving reports from other zones. And the major complaint is that the 100 forms per unit are too small.

“But, I have made a complaint to the national headquarters and more materials will be provided for the local governments or units that need more materials.”

There are expectations that with the gale of defections by heavyweight politicians across the country to the APC with their followers, the registration may produce a staggering membership figure that is well over 36 million.