In a book scheduled to be launched on Friday April 28th, former
spokesperson of late President Musa Yar'Adua and Chairman of Thisday
editorial board, Segun Adeniyi, revealed that Former President Goodluck
Jonathan was unhappy with the manner former chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega, went about
conducting the 2015 general election which he lost in to President
Buhari. Part of the book quotes Jonathan to have said;
“I was disappointed by Jega because I still cannot understand what was
propelling him to act the way he did in the weeks preceding the
election. As at the first week in February 2015 when about 40 percent of
Nigerians had not collected their PVCs, Jega said INEC was ready to
conduct an election in which millions of people would be
disenfranchised.”
Jonathan is also quoted to have accused that Americans were urging Jega
to go on with the elections despite the fact that some Nigerians had not
collected their voters card.
“Of course, the Americans were encouraging him to go ahead yet they
would never do such a thing in their own country. How could we have
cynically disenfranchised about a third of our registered voters for no
fault of theirs and still call that a credible election? The interesting
thing was that the opposition also supported the idea of going on with
the election that was bound to end in confusion” he said
Jonathan in the book defended his decision to postpone the election by six weeks.
“When the military and security chiefs demanded for more time to deal
with the insurgency, the reasons were genuine. As at February 2015, it
would have been very difficult to vote in Gombe, Adamawa, Borno and Yobe
states. But moment all the arms and ammunition that had been ordered
finally arrived, the military was able to use them to degrade the
capacity of Boko Haram to the level in which they posed the threat to
the election.”
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