‘Why PDM registration exercise failed’

• No, it didn’t flop, says party spokeman

By Lawrence Olaoye

Indications emerged yesterday that the nationwide registration exercise embarked upon by the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) may have hit the rocks for lack of funds.

This is coming as the party spokesman, Ahmed Rufai, debunked the report insisting that the PDM had a successful party registration.

Although the party claimed that the exercise is going on smoothly with large turn-out of new members across the country, the reality is that it may be a flop after all.

From all indications, there is a apathy among members who rushed to the PDM shortly after it was registered by INEC.

Investigations have established that most of the people that collected registration materials in the local government areas simply dumped them in the party offices.

A source within the party’s leadership disclosed that the exercise may have failed because there was no funds to prosecute the registration exercise as expected.

The source said most of the activities of the party have been done on IOU in recent past as the source of funds for its leadership seemed to have dried.

The situation is so critical the party cannot afford to make a provision of passport photographs for the few people registered in the on-going exercise.

Infact, a party official who craved anonymity in Kaduna, quoted that National Secretary, Dr. Wole Akinwumi, as informing them that “in-view of the inability of the Party to provide funding to enable members take photographs, it is no longer necessary to insist on passport photographs as part of membership requirement”

He said this was in a message the National Secretary sent to various stakeholders of the party across the country ahead of the commencement of the registration.

Meanwhile, a highly dependable source has revealed to our correspondent that arrangements have been concluded for the return of the PDM members to the fold of the original PDM that was clearly established to serve as a pressure group.

It is now evident that wrong signals were sent to convince them to come and join PDM as a political party instead the famous Peoples Democratic Movement as a pressure group.

When contacted, the PDM National Publicity Secretary, Ahmed Rufai, in response to a text said “It is not true that our nationwide registration is being hampered with paucity of fund, we had a successful nationwide membership registration which ended almost two weeks ago.”