•Ruling party builds database for strength, effective administration
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Tuesday, flagged off All Progressives Congress (APC) e-Membership Registration Train-the-Trainer Workshop for South-West Zone in Lagos.
The party’s National Secretary, Sen. Basiru Ajibola, led members of the APC National Working Committee to the flag-off ceremony held at the State House, Marina.
Also at the event included the state chairman of APC in Lagos, Pastor Cornelius Ojelabi, party secretaries from the six Southwest states and other working committee members.
The workshop, aimed at building capacity for the digitisation of the party’s membership database, will be held across the six States in the region. The move, it was said, is also to recalibrate the party’s member registration process, drive inclusive representation and promote demographic diversity.
Lagos Deputy Governor, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, who flagged off the workshop on behalf of the Governor, said the automation of APC’s system would help measure its full strength in any electoral process.
Dr. Hamzat noted that a data-driven system was one of the governance legacy initiated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a Governor and leader of political parties. The Deputy Governor said APC, at every level, must embrace the same approach in pushing its governance objectives and measuring its political progress.
He said: “This is exercise is particularly important and necessary for us to be able to know and identify true members of our party. This will afford the party leadership to trace any member to their ward level. It is not when elections are coming that people would come out to say they are members of the party.
“Digitising the party’s database would help APC synchronise its activities across the grassroots level and enable us to track the strength of the party at every ward. We can also gauge people’s confidence and feelings about our party from this approach. This innovative approach is long overdue, given the magnitude of the work APC is doing at the federal and state levels.”
Dr. Hamzat said the effectiveness of a party’s administrative process would reflect on how the party governed the places they were elected to govern, stressing that the digitisation would eliminate inadequacies associated with the party’s internal operations, including nomination process and election of officers.
The Deputy Governor charged those charged with responsibility to manage the process to ensure the outcome of the workshop reflected the expectations of the party’s leadership.
Ajibola, who represented the APC National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, said a political party was not designed to be just a contraption to take control of government, but a membership-based organisation.
The APC National Secretary said the party would further strengthen its legitimacy by having an accurate database that would show its demographic influence. The approach, he said, would help the party weed out non-members positioning to benefit from the party’s reward system.
He cited a scenario where a state chapter of APC submitted nomination forms for primaries but more than 50 per cent of the aspirants were not registered party members.
Ajibola said: “Our leader, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has shown us that politics is both scientific and engineering. Science and engineering are two aspects of human endeavour that are driven by empirical data. This exercise is deliberately designed to further improve the chance of our party in the coming elections.
“Both the hardware and software of our IT infrastructure to conduct this exercise are already in place. We place emphasis on training and a high-powered delegation from the National Working Committee of the party will be at the six centres across the Southwest to supervise the exercise.”
APC Deputy National Organising Secretary, Hon. Chidi Duru, said the exercise in the Southwest would be the last in the series, pointing out that the region was the last to undertake the programme
He said the capacity building workshop would develop an innovative system where the party could verify and identify its members from any corner of the country.
