The Delusion of Automatic Tickets: APC’s Recipe for Self-Destruction Ahead of 2027

Let’s be brutally honest: the idea that the All Progressives Congress (APC) can simply hand out “automatic tickets” to its newly defected governors and their allies is not just wishful thinking — it is political delusion of the highest order.

And it will not work. National Chairman Nentawe Yilwatda has already said it plainly: there is no such provision in the party’s constitution.

Yet the murmurs persist, the pressure from the defectors mounts, and the old guard is digging in. If the APC dares to flirt with this shortcut anyway, it will not unify the party. It will detonate it.

The party is already fracturing along the very fault lines the defectors created. Governors who crossed over from the PDP — Umo Eno in Akwa Ibom, Sheriff Oborevwori in Delta, Siminalayi Fubara in Rivers, Caleb Mutfwang in Plateau, Douye Diri in Bayelsa, Peter Mbah in Enugu, and now Agbu Kefas in Taraba — arrived with their own political machines, their own loyalists, and an understandable expectation that their “sacrifice” would be rewarded with control.

They want the party structures, the delegate lists, and ultimately the tickets. The men and women who stayed in APC through the lean years are having none of it. They built the party in their states. They are not about to hand over the keys to late arrivals.

In Akwa Ibom the battle lines are already drawn in blood: old bloc versus new bloc, with Governor Eno and Senate President Godswill Akpabio as the rival warlords.

Delta is a full-scale war zone after Oborevwori and Okowa’s entry. Rivers has Fubara’s alignment reopening old Wike wounds. Plateau, Bayelsa and Enugu are replicating the same ugly pattern of parallel meetings, rival chairmen and open mistrust. Adamawa already lost a governorship aspirant, Maurice Vunobolki, who walked away rather than wait for imposition.

Now add Taraba to the bonfire.

Governor Agbu Kefas formally defected earlier this year with much fanfare and presidential blessing. But the honeymoon ended almost immediately. Taraba APC was never a monolith; it has always been a collection of chieftains who endured years in opposition. Kefas came in as the shiny new leader with state resources and federal goodwill behind him.
Loyalists of the governor are already alleging sabotage by some appointees who are quietly backing rival camps. A court case is pending — hearing fixed for April 29 — challenging the outcome of the state congress that produced Alhaji Abubakar Bawa as chairman. Rumours of automatic tickets being quietly promised by the governor have been furiously denied by both the state government and the Taraba APC chairman. The denials themselves are revealing: they show how toxic the mere whisper of automatic tickets has become.

If the national leadership buckles and tries to impose automatic tickets anyway — for Kefas, for the other defected governors, for their anointed candidates — Taraba will explode the same way the others are exploding.

The old guard, who have been in the trenches since APC’s formation, will not simply roll over. They will go to court, they will hold parallel ward and local government congresses, they will leak damaging information to the press, and many will simply defect again — this time out of APC entirely. Why stay in a party that treats loyalty as disposable once a bigger fish swims in from PDP?

This is the fatal flaw in the automatic-ticket fantasy. It assumes that control can be bought with guaranteed nominations. It cannot. Nigerian politicians are not loyal to parties; they are loyal to power and to their own survival.

Handing automatic tickets to the new governors tells the foundation members: “Your years of suffering mean nothing.” It tells the defectors: “Your timing and bargaining power mean everything.” The result is mutual contempt, not unity.

And once the primaries become a farce of imposition rather than contest, the real defections will begin — not the choreographed ones we have seen so far, but the angry, vengeful walk-outs of men and women who feel cheated.

Some will go back to PDP. Others will shop for new platforms. A few will run as independents or join smaller parties just to spite the APC. The party that enters the 2027 general elections will not be a strengthened behemoth riding a wave of defections. It will be a divided house carrying fresh wounds and fresh enemies.

The delusion is understandable. In Nigerian politics, automatic tickets have sometimes worked — when the party was cohesive and the anointed candidate was genuinely popular.

But APC today is neither cohesive nor facing a weak opposition. It is a crowded tent full of egos who all believe they are the reason the party is winning. Trying to paper over that reality with unconstitutional shortcuts is not strategy; it is suicide.

Chairman Yilwatda was right to shut this down. If the party ignores him and tries anyway, the only automatic thing that will happen is automatic crisis — louder, deeper and more destructive than anything we have seen so far.

The 2027 elections will not be won by decree. They will be won by a party that is actually together. Right now, APC is choosing to tear itself apart instead.

The automatic ticket is not a solution. It is the spark that lights the fuse. And the fuse, my friends, is already burning.

Pamela .O political columnist and socio-political commentator.