It has been revealed that former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was disappointed
with the conduct of Professor Attahiru Jega following the brouhaha that took place
during the 2015 Presidential election.
Despite conceding the 2015 presidential election, former president Goodluck Jonathan was not comfortable with how it
was handled by Attahiru Jega, former chairman of the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC), TheCable reports.
This was revealed in a book written by Segun Adeniyi, titled ‘Against the Run of Play’. The book which detailed some of the
controversies that took place before and during the 2015 Presidential election revealed further that Jonathan also had a
meeting with Jega to express his
reservations about the preparedness of INEC for the exercise, but he insisted that the
election would go ahead.
“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,” the former president said.
“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.”
The book added: “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,” the former president said.
The election was scheduled for February 14, 2015, but the Jonathan government shifted
it by six weeks. The action was greeted by strong criticism from Nigerians. In the book, Jonathan also defended his decision to
postpone the election, saying it was for security reasons.
“When the military and security chiefs demanded for more time to deal with the insurgency, the reasons were genuine,” he
said.
“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.”
