Jonathan’s Claim On 2015 Kano Votes Factually Incorrect – Jega

Source: thewillnigeria.com

SAN FRANCISCO, May 04, (THEWILL) – A former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega has debunked the claim by ex-president Goodluck Jonathan that the major disparity between the votes cast for the presidential and National Assembly elections in Kano State during the 2015 general elections goes to show that the poll was manipulated.

The former president had in a book: ‘Against the Run of Play’ written by former presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi, claimed that the difference of a million votes recorded in the 2015 presidential and National Assembly elections in Kano State was ample enough to show that the presidential election might have been manipulated.

“Go and check the results from Kano. The presidential election and that of the 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 election reflected a vote of about 1.8 million,” Jonathan said.

But reacting through his erstwhile personal assistant, Abdullahi Usman, the former INEC boss said the former president’s claim was factually inaccurate, adding that the official figures released at the end of the elections had nothing unusual about them and insisted that they reflected a general trend in the country.

Jonathan had said in Adeniyi's book: “Go and check the results from Kano. The presidential election and that of the 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 election reflected a vote of about 1.8 million”.

In a statement issued on Thursday,
Usman explained, “The figures ascribed to each of the two elections in the earlier statement were nowhere near the actual number of voters in the officially declared results of the two elections.

“In truth, therefore, the total number of votes cast in the 2015 presidential election in Kano State was 2,172,447, as captured on INEC's official results collation document, the Presidential Election Summary of Results from States 'Form EC 8D (A)', a stamped and sealed copy of which was given out to agents of all the 14 political parties on the ballot, as well as to representatives of each of the security agencies present at the International Conference Centre Results Collation Centre, following the formal declaration of results by the commission in the early hours of Tuesday, March 31, 2015.”

He said the total votes scored by the two leading political parties in the contest for the three senatorial districts of the state was 2,097,881, excluding rejected ballots and votes scored by the remaining political parties that contested for the election in each senatorial District, explaining that rejected votes could be responsible for the difference of 74,566 between the total votes cast in the presidential and senatorial elections.

Usman added that the total votes scored by the two leading political parties in the House of Representatives election across the state was 2,032,472, excluding rejected ballots and votes scored by the remaining political parties that contested for the election.

“From the foregoing breakdown of votes tally across the three elections conducted on March 28, 2015 in Kano State, therefore, it is quite evident that any allusion to a probable disparity of one million votes between the number of people that voted in the presidential election and those that voted in either of the two National Assembly elections is nothing but an illusion,” said Jega’s former aide.