Speaking when he visited the Head Office of Media Trust, publishers of Daily Trust newspaper, Nwodo said the online registration was aimed at freeing the party from the stranglehold of “godfathers” who he did not name.
He said the People’s Democratic Party’s constitution provides that the registration of members should close at least a month to the primaries, and by implication the online registration, which started yesterday with the registration of President Goodluck Jonathan, would have to stop by the middle of next month. He, however, said the registration process would continue after the elections.
Nwodo said previously, membership registers were seized by godfathers who allow only their loyalists to register, but that the new system would create unimpeded access to membership of the party such that the individual would register on the party’s website after buying a scratch card for N1,200.
The registration is valid for four years, after which a member would have to renew it, he added.
“One of the critical innovations we also bring about is online registration of our members. Hitherto, because of the factions that existed in the party, if one faction collected the membership cards and registers, they only register their faction and they will deny other people registration. And this caused a lot of disharmony within the party. So we want to remove that obstacle.
“We hope this [registration] will go on until about the middle of September when we will start to organise our primaries. We have to stop when the constitution says we should stop. But it is ongoing, once you are 18 years you can register even after the election.
“People can now just walk into any of the five banks that we are using to register our members. When they pay their registration and annual due, they are given a pin number. With this pin number, they enter our website and they download our forms; they fill it and get registered. That way there is no intermediary other than you having the money, go to the bank, pay and then download the forms to fill,” he said.
The party will formally sign the contract for the sale of the scratch cards with the five banks at its headquarters in Abuja today, the chairman said.
Nwodo said the online registration would also boost internal democracy in a “healing process from the haemorrhage of deregistration of members, imposition of candidates and so on.”
He said the exercise is expected to generate funds to help in running the party, stressing that such payment will also make members more committed because they will feel they are stakeholders.
“It also gives us the data base with which we can run our party. Because once we have data base, we know the number of people we have in each ward. We will know the number of Nigerians who are in PDP. We will also know how much comes into our coffers and with this we can plan better,” he added.
Also speaking of the controversial zoning formula of the party, Nwodo regretted that certain statements he made in the past were misconstrued to mean he was not in support of power rotation. The chairman said zoning has been part and parcel of the PDP constitution and he was not happy that some states have not been zoning the position of governor.
“I never said and I will never say that there is no zoning. If I say so, it means that the constitution of the PDP, which I swore to uphold, that I have no interest in upholding that oath. Our constitution clearly says that in the interest of fairness, justice and equity, we should zone and rotate offices,” Nwodo said.
“If you say there will be no zoning, what are you going to do in the states? In fact we are not happy with some states that have not been zoning their governor; where the major tribes have been governor. In the interest of our constitution, it should be going round the senatorial zones.
“In the local government, the chairmanship moves from one political constituency to the other. At the ward level all over Nigeria, everybody knows which family in the ward is going to produce the next councillor. Now at the national level, when we produce a President from the South, we must produce a Vice President from the North. The chairman will have to come from the opposite side, okay? Then we zone the Senate President, the Speaker, Deputy Senate President, Deputy Speaker to make sure that six geo-political zones are covered. So I must have been mad, out of my mind to say there is no zoning,” Nwodo said
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