Protesters on Monday grounded activities at the national headquarters of the All Progressives Congress to demand an extension of the ongoing nationwide membership registration and revalidation.
The protesters, armed with placards and posters with various inscriptions, stormed the party’s secretariat around 10.30am and occupied the entrance for about 30 minutes, appealing to the national leadership of the party to extend the exercise.
Leader of the Coalition of Political Action Group, the organiser of the protests, Senator John Akpanudoehede, in a letter to the National Secretary of the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, signed by Habeeb Mutallib, said, “We are here in relation to the ongoing membership registration and revalidation exercise scheduled to end in two days’ time; March 31, 2021.
“It is our firm expectation and demand that the exercise should be extended indefinitely until such a time as it becomes incompatible with the electoral laws and timetable.
“The membership registration and revalidation exercise has proven to be an inspired idea by the National Caretaker Committee led by the able chairman. It has provided a reason for many of our warring leaders and factions to unite around a common objective in the higher interest of our party as they work together to make certain the exercise succeeds in their constituencies.
“Bearing in mind that our father and most valuable player, President Muhammadu Bunari, will not be on the ballot in 2023, which means we must devise sustainable means to retain power and continue his legacies, the exercise is the only political event within our party since 2015 which has rekindled our hopes that the grassroots energies which propelled us to victory and displaced the PDP from the Presidency in 2015 still exists.
“Since nature abhors vacuum, we are aware that if the APC wraps up this exercise prematurely as planned, the PDP, the APC’s perennial opposition, which has always fancied itself our would-be nemesis, will immediately exploit the breather to start her own raucous mobilisation exercise in a bid to distract the populace from her heinous crimes against the Republic while she held sway between 1999 and 2015.
“Good politics demands that we deny the PDP such an opportunity. To do so, we must remain prolific in counting Nigerians both by sustaining an unending flow of good governance manifesting as the dividends of democracy as well as by direct engagement programmes like this exercise.”
The protesters, therefore, appealed to the National Caretaker Committee to grant “an indefinite extension of the APC membership registration and revalidation exercise.”
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