Politics

2019: Okorocha rips into Tinubu

Published

9 years ago

December 11, 2017

has given APC leader Bola Tinubu a broadside for insisting President Muhammadu Buhari won’t get an automatic ticket in 2019. The Okorocha-led APC Governors Forum have been told to support Buhari for 2019.

Okorocha, who bagged an honorary doctorate degree at the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State on Saturday, was responding to journalists’ questions on Tinubu’s insistence.

Okorocha maintained that he would support Buhari for a second term—just like he has urged all the governors to support the sole candidacy of Buhari in the 2019 election.

“The (Tinubu’s) statement came to me as a surprise; come to think of it, I never referred to him. I referred to the governors of Nigeria, including the PDP governors and I said only one or two of them had not joined yet,” the governor said.

“Since I made the statement, no governor has said something contrary to what I said. I am surprised that Asiwaju will now be speaking for the governors.”

According to him, Tinubu looks like somebody crying more than the bereaved.

“I did not see reason for the statement actually. But he commands my respect and I don’t want to take issue with the national leader of my party.”

Okorocha said he asked only the governors for their support.

“The word I use is support that does not mean there will not be a primary. Governors can only contribute 37 votes; we still have over 5,000 votes up there. Governors alone do not determine the standard bearer of a party.”

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Although he is yet to declare his plan for a second term, Buhari has been getting subterranean support from governors and certain ministers who call themselves the Buharists.

It was the speculation that made the party stalwart and ex-VP Atiku Abubakar to bail out of the party two weeks ago. Atiku wants to make the fourth attempt at the presidency.

Okorocha, however, regretted Atiku’s defection to the PDP. He said the former veepee is a great politician whose vacuum the party will have to fill in good time.