Mark to ADC Members: No One Should Stockpile Cards

• Parties obsessed with illusion of size, says Aregbesola

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

National Chairman of African Democratic Party (ADC), Senator David Mark, has cautioned against stockpiling the party’s membership cards by elite members of the party.

Mark, who spoke at the commencement of the party’s membership registration exercise, said, “What we’re kicking off today is laying a solid foundation for our future results in the ADC.

“Once you get the cards and you start the exercise, register anybody who wants to be a member of ADC. I know what they do in other political parties. Somebody will buy the cards and keep them in his room.

“Our cards will not be kept in the rooms. Our cards will be given to our members. One person will take the whole cards and they will be giving it to you on piecemeal basis. Or some people will come and say, well, you are not my friend, you don’t belong to us. You will not vote for this man.”

He added, “For ADC, it is our card, for all ADC members. Whether you are our friend or you are our enemy, as long as you want to register with us and as long as you abide by our do’s and don’ts, we’ll give you our cards.

“All I want to assure you is that ADC is a new bride in town. Everybody, anywhere you go to, people want to join ADC. They clamour for them to get the cards. People have been saying, where are your cards?

“Where are your cards? The cards are out now, so we’ll see what happens. I assure you that in 2027, ADC will form the government and this is the foundation for that we need. This is the foundation that we are laying today. So I want to thank you for being here on schedule and I want to appreciate your presence here.”

In his remarks, Chairman of ADC’s Membership and Registration Committee, Alhaji Imam Ibrahim, said the committee thought of developing websites and felt that at a point websites would be crushed.

Ibrahim said, “We also thought of developing an app and we felt that at a point many people don’t want to buy an app or download an app just for party registration. So we came up with what we call web app.

“So within this period we have been able to ensure that the cards for registration are ready. We have decided on interim because we are putting it on demand. We are not going to give out cards to be kept there and they will not be used.”

He explained, “We are putting on demand and on interim we have said that we are going to give each state 50,000 cards from today so that you go and register because we want a platform where the manual registration goes alongside the online registration.

“Graciously, the national chairman and National Working Committee have given their approval for this to go that’s why we are here today. So we are here to demonstrate these two platforms. One the online registration and one the manual registration which is very important because internet penetration is a little bit low.”

National Secretary of ADC, Rauf Aregbesola, said many political parties were obsessed with the illusion of their size.

Aregbesola stated, “We have spoken before about building what must outlive us. Today, I want to speak about the very foundation of that building—the people who make up this party. Because if the foundation is false, what we raise upon it will not stand.

“Let me begin with a truth that is uncomfortable but necessary. Across our political landscape, parties have become addicted to the illusion of size. They inflate membership rolls with phantom names, duplicate entries, and invented identities—all to project a strength they do not possess. The registers are fat, but the structures are hollow.”

He stressed, “We must not follow that path. We must resist—with every fibre of our conviction—the temptation to bloat our figures with imaginary people. It does not help us. It does not strengthen us. At the end of such an exercise, all we will have is a token register propped up by a weak structure—impressive on paper, powerless in practice.

“A party of ghosts cannot win elections. A party of ghosts cannot govern. A party of ghosts cannot hold its leaders to account. And a party of ghosts will, inevitably, be haunted by its own dishonesty.

“What we need—what we must build with urgency and discipline—is a membership register of integrity. Every name must belong to a real person. Every person must be documented, verified, and accounted for. This is not bureaucracy; this is the architecture of trust.”