Tinubu’s aide faults ADC membership portal, warns against ‘system design error’

2026-03-02 - 17:08

O’tega Ogra, Senior Special Assistant on Digital and New Media to President Bola Tinubu, has criticised the newly launched online membership registration platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), raising concerns about its credibility and data verification process. Ogra made the remarks in a post on Monday while reacting to the ADC’s announcement that it had opened a free nationwide digital membership portal in line with the Electoral Act 2026. Addressing the party’s spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, Ogra questioned whether the party had built adequate mechanisms to verify the identity of registrants. Dear ADC @BolajiADC , Are you aware that President Bola Tinubu has made it easy to validate user information through an interconnection with NIMC @nimc_ng? I understand you made an system design error by rolling out a platform for something as sensitive as party members... — O'tega Ogra (@otegaogra) March 2, 2026 “Dear ADC @BolajiADC, are you aware that President Bola Tinubu has made it easy to validate user information through an interconnection with National Identity Management Commission?” he wrote. Ogra alleged that the opposition party made a technical error by rolling out the platform without proper safeguards. “I understand you made a system design error by rolling out a platform for something as sensitive as party members registration without putting mechanisms to validate registrants in place,” he said. He added that the party’s claims of massive registration figures had now attracted public scrutiny. “As a result, your claims of millions of people registering has come under scrutiny,” Ogra stated. The presidential aide, however, said the administration supports broader civic participation, stressing the need for credible systems. “This administration is all about participative democracy but please do things right to prevent spurious claims of some being disenfranchised tomorrow. A word is enough,” he wrote. Ogra also cautioned that public confidence in political parties depends on attention to basic technical and administrative standards. “The little things matter. If Nigerians can’t trust you to be thorough in little things like this, then what are we talking about,” he added. The ADC had announced on Sunday that its new digital platform was designed to comply with provisions of the Electoral Act 2026 on digital membership registers ahead of the 2027 general election. Vanguard News