2027: ADC new bride, says Mark; As opposition party inaugurate registration panel
2027: ADC new bride, says Mark; As opposition party inaugurate registration panel
By Ndukaku Ihe
Former Senate President, David Mark, has said the National Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), is the new bride in the country.
Mark, who is the National Chairman of the opposition party stated this, on Thursday, while speaking at the inauguration of the ADC Registration Committee.
He assured members that the opposition party will win the 2027 general election and form the next government, and declared that the membership of the party is open to all interested Nigerians.
Mark added to that unlike other political parties, where membership cards are hoarded, nobody would be denied access to the ADC membership card.
According to him, “what we are 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.
“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.”
The party chairman stated that, “I want to assure 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 that we need. This is the foundation that we are laying today.”
The ADC National Secretary, Rauf Aregbosola, while speaking at the event, admonished the committee not to toe the path of political parties, which inflate their membership.
Aregbosola said: “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.
“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.”
He added that “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.
“Every one of us—from national leadership down to the ward level—must work together to ensure that only real people are registered and properly documented. This is a collective responsibility.
“No leader should look the other way when registrations are padded. No officer should accept figures that cannot withstand scrutiny. We must be our own auditors before the public audits us.”
The chairman of the committee, Imam Ibrahim, in his remarks, explained that the party will do the online registration side by side with the manual registration.
“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,” Ibrahim stated
