As the sale of All Progressives Congress (APC) expression of interest and nomination forms for the Edo State governorship election ends today (Monday), the party is to conduct an update of its membership register in the state ahead of the February 17 primary election.
Deputy National Organising Secretary, Nze Chidi Duru, made this known at the weekend when a group of friends of Dr. Ernest Afolabi Umakhihe picked the expression of interest and nomination forms for the retired permanent secretary.
The update of the membership register became necessary following disagreement of figures by the political tendencies in the state during the last meeting the National Working Committee (NWC) had with stakeholders of the party in the state.
A committee is to be dispatched from the party’s national secretariat in Abuja to update the membership register in the 192 wards across the state.
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Duru said: “A committee from the national headquarters will be on their way to Edo State next week to begin the update of the membership register.
“As you know, there were discontent tones. We will write a letter in that respect to the state chapter of the party. We can only be seen to be impartial and we cannot come to a meeting of stakeholders to misrepresent the total membership of our party in Edo State.
“That Edo is only 241,000 in numbers when we know that the membership of even Ebonyi State is almost close to a million and Edo is bigger than Ebonyi State. Even against our protestation that we have a bigger and more authentic register.
“So that is the responsibility of the NWC and we discharge that.”
Assuring all the aspirants of the resolve of the NWC to conduct a free, fair and transparent primary, the Deputy National Organising Secretary denied insinuation that the NWC had ceded the power of screening and clearing aspirants for the shadow election to a committee.
Duru said: “The National Chairman has also asked me to inform all the aspirants that the responsibility of vetting and clearing all the aspirants domicile with the NWC of our party and the National Working Committee has not abandoned that responsibility or have they given that authority to any other sub-national.
“Therefore, the exercise of vetting and clearing will only happen in the first instance through a committee that will be set up and we are in the process of setting up the committee.
“We will ensure and guarantee free, fair and transparent primary. What we want is the person who will win for us. That will win the primary and win the election ultimately for the party.
“We want Edo State in the basket of APC states and that is very important. We cannot just have one voice in the South-South, which Cross River currently represents. Once we can have Edo State in the basket, hopefully, we can also translate into another state in Ondo.
Also, checks in the party’s Directorate of Organisation at the close of work on Friday showed that only 12 of the 29 aspirants who initially declared intention to contest for the party’s tickets have purchased the N50 million expression of interest and nomination forms.”
The party so far has equally raked in N600 million from sale of forms to the 12 aspirants.