By Suleiman Anyalewechi
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has distanced itself from the figure of the digital membership registers of political parties recently made public by the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressive Congress APC Prof Nentawe Yilwaltda.
On an Arise Television’s News programme to defend the seemingly outrageous high number of votes purportedly garnered by President Bola Tinubu at the just concluded primaries of the party, Yilwaltda had claimed that the APC verified and submitted a whopping 12 .9 million registered members after its registration exercise.
The APC National Chairman, while also giving the number of registered members of other parties, claimed that the combined numbers of opposition party members is not up to that of the APC .
According to his breakdown, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has 2.4 million members, the African Democratic Congress, ADC, 1.6 million, Labour Party, LP, 1.3 million members ,and Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, 700,00 members.
” We ( APC) have about 12.9.million registered members that were submitted to the INEC. Let me give you data . APC submitted.12.9.million registered members .
” PDP submitted 1.6 million registered members. The ADC
submitted 1.6 million registered members, Labour Party submitted.1.3 million registered members, and NDC submitted, 700,000 registered members.
” So, these are the data. If you put all these political parties together, they don’t add up to APC’s registered members.
All the political parties, this number I have counted, they are not up to the number that APC registered.
“But even the most important thing in our own case is that we have verified data. The data of our members are verified by NIMC . We synchronised the data with NIMC”, Yilwaltda claimed.
He emphasized that the numbers of votes polled by the President during the primaries were nothing extraordinary going by the figure of registered members of the party.
But apparently scandalized, the INEC said the figure reeled out by the APC National Chairman never emanated from it .
The spokesperson for the INEC Chairman, Dayo Oketola, in a short statement on Tuesday, May 26, informed that the data so released by the APC National Chairman remains strange to the Commission.
” Dear esteemed media colleagues, please note that this is certainly not from INEC . Thanks” Oketola stated .
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