Kaduna central: Automatic ticket, illegal, alien to APC constitution, says Gen. Saleh

Wed, Oct 10, 2018 | By publisher


Politics

A former lawmaker, representing the Kaduna Central Senatorial District, Gen. Mohammed Saleh (rtd) has said that the phenomenon of issuing an automatic ticket to candidates was alien to the nation’s constitution and that of the All Progressives Congress.

Saleh, an ally of President Muhammadu Buhari had earlier pitched his tent with the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani on the direct primary mode of election, made a U-turn to support the preferred candidate of the state governor, Mallam Uba Sani for the zonal ticket of the party.

Uba Sani, at the Saturday’s senatorial primary election, was declared the winner against the party’s insistence that the incumbent senator remained the party’s choice for the zone ahead of the 2019 poll.

But at the presentation of results to the governor’s preferred candidate and others held at the late Gen. Usman Katsina House, Kaduna, the retired General, who was among the aspirants, insisted that he had to toe the lines of his party in the state and support Mallam Nasir el-Rufai’s candidate, who won the poll.

He described the issue of “automatic ticket” as illegitimate in a democracy “since it is not anywhere in our nation’s constitution, the APC constitution or even the Electoral Act”.

He noted that as a loyal party member, they couldn’t have gone against the decision of the party since the leadership and stakeholders of the APC had directed that states could adopt an indirect or direct mode of primary election. – Punch

– Oct. 10, 2018 @ 13:16 GMT |

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