Automatic Ticket: Tinubu Replies Rochas, We Mustn’t Behave Like PDP

National leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, says the APC must maintain its policy of internal democracy and oppose the idea of giving automatic tickets to aspirants.

Tinubu in a statement on Monday by his media aide, Tunde Rahman, was reacting to comments credited to Rochas Okorocha, governor of Imo state, who criticised his opposition to an automatic ticket for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

The APC chieftain had been quoted as saying that the APC would not give President Muhammadu Buhari an automatic ticket for the 2019 presidential election, but Okorocha accused Tinubu of “crying more than the bereaved.”

Tinubu, however, said his position should not be misconstrued by the APC governors’ forum, saying he believed that governors had an important role to play in the emergence of the party’s candidates.

According to Rahman, Tinubu did not attack the APC governors in the interview he granted journalist in Akure, but said the party should not follow the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) “penchant for short-circuiting internal democracy” by promoting the idea of an automatic ticket.

“Asiwaju (Tinubu) never said anything that could be interpreted as meaning or even implying the governors are irrelevant or insignificant to the party’s nomination process,” the statement read.

“As a former governor and a leading statesman within the party, such words would never come from him.

“Moreover, Asiwaju is a democrat who believes that the open and democratic processes of the APC, which led to the nomination of President Buhari in the first instance, have served the party well and has helped distinguish APC from PDP and other parties where fairness and internal democracy are rare commodities.

“Every individual has a right to endorse or support a candidate of his choosing. What Asiwaju said at that encounter and still canvasses is that the APC should not mimic the PDP’s penchant for short-circuiting internal democracy by promoting the idea of an automatic ticket.

“The exercise of internal democracy and honouring the letter and spirit of party rules can only strengthen the party and enthuse its members.

“APC’s all-inclusive philosophy was not devised today. It had been with the party since its creation. It was this spirit, which we believe, attracted fellow progressives and those who genuinely believe in democracy in all of its aspects to the party. Asiwaju includes Governor Okorocha in this group.”