Nigeria’s Vice President, Arc Mohammed Namadi Sambo has explained that the PDP is not afraid of the use of the card reader in the forthcoming general elections, rather it is concerned that no eligible voter is disenfranchised.
The Vice President gave the explanation on Thursday, regarding the perceived opposition of the PDP to the use of the card reader, when he met with members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kano State chapter.
He said “One thing I will tell you is that PDP is not afraid of anything, not even the card reader. We are not afraid of the card reader. To be very honest, what we want is free and fair elections.”
Expressing the concern of the party over the card reader, the Vice President said “We don’t want anything to go wrong through the use of the card reader, in one of the States, Ebonyi State, the INEC commissioner there said he is going to repeat the testing and in so many other states there have been problems with the card readers, to the extent that INEC themselves have introduced an incidence form, that is why we are saying, look le’ts do this thing properly.”
Vice President Sambo further explained that since 2011, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has championed free, fair and credible elections, noting that the administration’s motto is “one man one vote, one woman one vote and one youth one vote.”
He further noted that for the “first time all Nigerians came out and were sleeping up to the early hours of the day, to make sure they get their cards. This is what we are promoting continuously.”
Arc Sambo said that the PDP, will win the general elections, because “PDP is a party of Nigeria, PDP is Nigeria, you go to every local government, every ward, every polling unit, PDP has a system in place.
It has a chairman, secretary and at least 12 members of the executive, so we are everywhere, and there is no party that is like PDP. PDP has remained as PDP since 1998 to date, we have never changed our colour or our name, we are the party for Nigeria and we are Nigerians,” he also added.
Speaking further, Arc Sambo stated that “as a party we believe in the rule of law, that is why we signed the Freedom of Information Act. Even to address the issue of corruption, you must start from a free, fair and credible elections, if you don’t do it you have not started to address corruption.”
Earlier the Vice President said the aim of the meeting was to inform the journalists on the inroads the administration had made in positively transforming the socio economic wellbeing of Nigerians, emphasizing that the administration had delivered on all its campaign promises, and have not failed Nigerians, stressing that they are poised to do more.
He enumerated these achievements to cover the areas of power supply, education, transportation, security, agriculture, fight against corruption and corrupt practices, industrialization, job creation as well as security.
The Vice President while thanking the media men and women for their support to the administration, urged them to inform the people of these achievements and also call on the people to cooperate and partner government at all levels to tackle the insurgency.
