#NigeriaDecides: Jonathan Speaks About Election, Condemns Vote Buyers

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has condemned the act of vote buying indulged in by some politicians to win elections.

According to him, politicians attempting to win elections by “unorthodox” means such as vote-buying are armed robbers and grifters.

The former Nigerian leader said just like armed robbers and con men who are not decent people of society, politicians who buy votes are also not decent.

Naija News reports that Jonathan made this pronouncement while he spoke to pressmen after casting his vote in his home state of Bayelsa for the presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday.

He said  “For us who are politicians, our conduct matters a lot.

“And I always tell politicians that ‘Yes, you can win elections through unorthodox means, just like using violence to win elections or buying votes and so on. But when you do that, you are behavingthrough robbery, but everybody knows that he’s an armed robber. A con man makes money through deceiving people, but everybody knows that he’s a con man. They’re not decent members of society.”

Jonathan said politicians are supposed to be decent members of society. For this reason, he says “we must conduct our affairs very creditably” so that supporters, relatives and others would be convinced that politics is a “clean business.”

“My plea is, we the politicians, the security people, the INEC operatives should do the best for the country; the whole world is looking at us.

“So many senior global citizens are in Nigeria because of these elections. They want us to succeed, and we must not fail.”

The former president also commended INEC for using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the election.

He submitted that even though hithes can’t be ruled out but the technology is evidence of the commission’s developments.

Jonathan stated that “BVAS is an improvement on the card reader, and I believe it will be better than the card reader,” he said. “I don’t think we are moving backwards. We may still have some hitches – it’s technology. Even you have problems with your phones.

“Even if you buy one of the best smartphones, sometimes, you still have problems. I’m not expecting that [in] the whole country, the BVAS machines will work perfectly. But it’s a significant improvement and at least there’s an attempt to improve on the methodology.

“The only thing I request from INEC is that in terms of distributing materials, they should improve on that because it appears they are using the same method to distribute materials”