Former INEC Chairman, Jega disappointed me – Jonathan

Jonathan made this claim in Against the Run of Play, a book by ThisDay Editorial Board Chairman Olusegun Adeniyi.

Jonathan had said that he was disappointed in Professor Jega who was the then chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the way the election went.

He said the margin between the presidential election and National Assembly results in Kano State showed everything was not right with the election.

Prof Mohammed Kuna who is the special assistant to Jega spoke on his behalf insisting there was nothing wrong with the Kano election.

“There is nothing particularly special about the Kano result; it is a general trend as many votes were more interested in the presidential election than in other elections. That was what happened across the country and you can go and do the tabulation.”

“With the card reader, it is no longer possible to return results that are higher than the accredited voters. If you analyse the results nationally, you will discover the same trend.”

A source also close to Jega said the former president but have been ill-advised as the former INEC chairman would not have been arm-twisted to do what was wrong.

Jonathan also insisted that it was right for his administration to have postponed the election based on security reasons.

“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 the 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.”

Although the former president faulted the results of the 2015 presidential election, he said he conceded defeat to avoid bloodshed.

“Go and check the results from Kano. The Presidential election and that of National Assembly happened on the same day and same time. The National Assembly result reflected that about 800,000 people voted but that of the presidential reflected a vote of about 1.8 million.

I had reports of what happened but I decided that for such to be accepted, it meant that those who called themselves my supporters must have colluded.

I was betrayed by the very people I relied on to win the election.

“In 2011 when Buhari did not campaign anywhere and could not have won the election, there was a spontaneous violent reaction that led to the death of several innocent people, including Youth Corps members.”

“I asked myself: what would happen in a situation in which there was already internal and international conspiracy in his favour? I could not bear the thought of anybody dying, so I told myself I had only one option and that was to concede,” Jonathan said.