Goodluck Jonathan opens up: Jega disappointed me on how he conducted the 2015 general election

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.”