2015 Polls: Hold Jega responsible, PDP tells Nigerians over Card reader failures

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The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation (PDPPCO) has called on Nigerians to hold the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, responsible for the card reader glitches in yesterday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections.
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The malfunctioning of the card readers in many polling units in parts of the country has forced the INEC to extend the election to Sunday in areas where the card readers failed and the electoral boy had resorted to manual accreditation.

Director of Media and Publicity of the PDPPCO, Femi Fani-Kayode said yesterday that the fears that PDP had all along expressed over the use of card readers for this crucial election have now been confirmed.

According to him, “We had raised a number of issues about the card reader; for instance, we had argued that the card reader should have been test-run for a smaller election before deploying it for an election of this magnitude; we had raised other concerns, but the INEC under the Chair of Professor Attahiru Jega, had insisted on using the machine.

“Now that the machine has messed up the elections in many polling booths in parts of the country, necessitating the extension of the exercise to Sunday, it is now very clear that our party, the PDP, and the Presidential Campaign Organisation were right after all in their reservations about the use of the card readers.

“The malfunctioning of the machine is just the first instance of the imperfection and deliberate sinister designs for which INEC, acting in cahoots with the APC, wanted to deploy the machine. The other components of the sinister designs will soon unravel to the shock of Nigerians.

“Apart from the card readers that largely malfunctioned to the extent that our presidential candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan could not have his fingerprint verified, result sheets were not provided in many places.

“We will be forced to do the needful to ensure that the opposition APC and Professor Jega do not rig the elections against us, but we will like to call on Nigerians, to hold Jega responsible for the failure by the Commission to conduct elections as scheduled for Saturday in all the polling booths in Nigeria.

“It is shameful that just like he did in 2011 National Assembly elections when he announced the postponement of the election midway due to failure to fully deploy electoral materials, Jega, who boasted that the Commission was ready to conduct the election with the use of card readers, has failed to deliver.

“We call on our teeming PDP members and supporters to remain calm and steadfast as we wait for the Commission to put its acts together and as we hope to run away with victory in spite of the obvious and deliberate shenanigans and subterfuge to manipulate the election against us by the INEC and its collaborator, the APC.”

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