Why Jonathan, PDP are angry with Jega – Investigation
ruling Peoples Democratic Party were angry with the
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega.
A week-long investigation by our correspondent in
Abuja showed that the President and his party are
not happy with Jega over his insistence that the
commission would use the Permanent Voter Cards
for the election.
The PVCs were used for the conduct of the
governorship elections in both Ekiti and Osun states,
which were won by the PDP and the All Progressives
Congress respectively.
Apart from this, the President and the party were
also angry that the commission was going ahead with
its decision to use card readers.
This technology was however not used in both Ekiti
and Osun states elections.
The commission has said that the card reader can
only read PVC issued by it and that any person that
shows up at the polling unit without a PVC or with a
card not issued by INEC will not be able to vote.
It was learnt that the Presidency and the ruling party
were not totally against the use of the PVCs, but they
were not happy with the use of card readers.
A worker in the Presidency who spoke with our
correspondent on Sunday queried the insistence of
INEC under the leadership of Jega to go ahead with
the two items.
He said, "Now, what we are saying is that yes, the
PVCs were used in both Ekiti and Osun governorship
elections but the way and manner the PVCs are being
distributed now is suspicious.
"Look at the figure of those who have collected from
the northern part of the country and look at the
figure from the southern part, where President
Jonathan hails from.
"If the election is going to be by ethnic sentiment
alone, you will know that our President has been
defeated already. So, that's the reason.
"Look at Ogun and Lagos states, which we all know
are politically sophisticated. Why are the electorates
not picking their PVCs? We are worried."
In terms of PVCs collection, figures released by the
commission indicated that Ogun State is lagging
behind among all the states of the federation,
including the Federal Capital Territory.
In the state, only 808,590 out of the 1,829,534
registered voters had collected their PVCs. This figure
represents a mere 44.20 per cent.
But the commission said that 1,387,401 PVCs had
been delivered to the state.
Lagos State with 5,822,207 registered voters had
recorded 63.44 per cent of the PVCs collection. This
shows that 3,693,355 of the cards had been picked by
their owners.
But the commission said that 5,558,062 cards had
been delivered for voters in the state.
This means that there are 1,864,707 PVCs yet to be
picked by their owners in the state.
When asked whether the refusal of the owners of the
PVCs to pick them up could be attributed to Jega, the
source said that the commission should embark on
more enlightenment.
On the issue of card readers, a member of the
National Working Committee of the party, who spoke
on condition of anonymity, said that there was no
way the machine would be effective in the area of
accreditation of voters.
When this issue was raised before the commission,
an explanatory note presented to our correspondent
showed that accreditation of a voter using the card
reader is expected to last for about 20 seconds.
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