The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Nentawe Yilwatda, has applauded the party for its strength against the opposing political parties.

Speaking in an interview on Arise News on Monday, May 25, he indicated that the numerical strength of the APC dwarfs the other political parties, including the PDP, ADC, Labour Party and the NDC.

He notes that the that the party remains Nigeria’s most organised political platform.

According to him, the ruling All Progressives Congress, Nentawe Yilwatda now has 12.9 million verified registered members, compared to the PDP’s 2.4 million, ADC’s 1.6 million, Labour Party’s 1.3 million, and NDC 700,000, while defending the party’s controversial primary elections.

“We have about 12.9 million registered voters that were submitted to INEC. Let me give you data. APC submitted 12.9 million registered voters. PDP submitted 2.4 million registered voters. The ADC submitted 1.6 million registered voters. Labour Party submitted 1.3 million registered voters. NDC submitted 700,000 registered members,” he said.

“So these are the data. If you put all these political parties together, they don’t add up to APC’s registered members. All the political parties, this number I’ve counted, they’re not up to the number that APC registered.”

Yilwatda further claimed that the APC is the only political party in Nigeria whose membership register is fully verified through the National Identity Management Commission.

“But even the most important thing in our own case is that we have verified data. 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. APC is the only political party that sources data from NIMC, which means that you cannot come unverified.”

The APC chairman also defended the outcome of the party’s presidential primary, which saw President Bola Tinubu secure nearly 10.9 million votes, despite criticism over the credibility of the process and viral videos showing questionable counting procedures.

“Yes, this is what we have,” Yilwatda 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 counting videos suggested inflated figures, the APC chairman dismissed the clips as misleading.

“Some of these videos are old videos, unverified sources,” he said.

“But the data we have is different. 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.”