The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Nentawe Yilwatda, has revealed that the party now has 12.9 million verified registered members, a figure he said surpasses the combined membership strength of major opposition parties in Nigeria.
Speaking during an interview with ARISE News on Monday, Yilwatda defended the credibility of the APC’s controversial primary elections and insisted that the ruling party remains the most organised political platform in the country.
According to him, the APC submitted 12.9 million registered members to the Independent National Electoral Commission, compared to 2.4 million by the Peoples Democratic Party, 1.6 million by the African Democratic Congress, 1.3 million by the Labour Party, and 700,000 by the NDC.
“We have about 12.9 million registered voters that were submitted to INEC,” Yilwatda said.
“If you put all these political parties together, they don’t add up to APC’s registered members.”
The APC chairman further claimed that the ruling party is the only political organisation in Nigeria whose membership database is fully verified through the National Identity Management Commission.
“All our data of our members are verified by NIMC. We synchronise the data with NIMC,” he said.
“So for you to be a member of APC, just like how you register in banks, you register for your international passport, for driver’s licence, the same thing is how you register with APC.”
Yilwatda also defended the outcome of the APC presidential primary election, which produced President Bola Tinubu with nearly 10.9 million votes despite criticism surrounding the process and viral videos alleging irregularities in vote counting.
“Yes, this is what we have,” he said while defending the figures.
“We had about 12.9 million and about 10.9 million voted, which means about 2 million people did not vote across the country for our members. A reasonable number. So we had a very reasonable turnout.”
Responding to allegations that some videos suggested inflated vote counts, Yilwatda dismissed the clips as misleading and lacking credibility.
“Some of these videos are old videos, unverified sources,” he said.
“The total vote cast in the whole entire state is just about 20,000. So how do you get over 20-something thousand from one ward? People can mimic counting at any point. People can do their drama. But I work with data.”
The APC chairman also denied allegations that the ruling party was interfering in the internal crises affecting opposition parties.
“You’ve been hearing the fight between ADC and NDC, the self-implosion that happened there. People said the self-implosion would be in APC, but the self-implosion was in the opposition,” he said.
Asked directly whether the APC was meddling in opposition affairs, he replied: “We don’t.”
Yilwatda maintained that the APC remained stable despite protests and disputes arising from its primary elections in several states.
“We have a stable party, very stable, very calm,” he said.
“We have one of the best governing structures in Nigeria right now as a political party.”
Addressing criticisms of candidate imposition and lack of internal democracy, the APC chairman argued that the party largely conducted direct primaries across the country.
According to him, out of the 36 states, only three governorship candidates emerged through consensus arrangements, while the others participated in direct primaries.
He explained that the party delayed final declarations of winners pending reports from appeal committees reviewing petitions from aggrieved aspirants.
“You declare the election at the constituency level, but not declare the winner,” he said.
“A winner comes after we receive the report of the appeal committee. If there’s need for a rerun or substitution based on the report, then we make a final declaration at the national level.”
Yilwatda acknowledged that governors openly supported preferred aspirants in some states but argued that political endorsements were lawful and did not guarantee victory.
“In some states, governors have anointed some people and yet they lost,” he said.
“A governor is like any other individual. Anybody can endorse you.”
The APC chairman also credited President Tinubu with playing a central role in the formation and survival of the party since 2013.
“In 2013, when we formed APC, President Tinubu was not contesting, but he was a rallying point of the APC,” he said.
“He galvanised the party into victory and didn’t ask for any position in government.”
Yilwatda added that Tinubu later helped reconcile factions within the party ahead of the 2019 elections after being appointed to lead a reconciliation committee by the late former President Muhammadu Buhari.
On his expected legacy as APC national chairman, Yilwatda said he hoped to be remembered for improving transparency, automating party processes, and promoting data-driven decision-making within the party.
“We want to be remembered as a chairman that led the party through improving transparency within the party,” he said.
“The automation we’ve done and the register we have, we’ve proven that we can have data-driven decision-making within the party.”
