The Presidency on Thursday broke its silence on the planned use of card readers for the 2015 general elections as Vice President Namadi Sambo declared that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not afraid of the use of the technology.
Rather, Sambo said the ruling party was more concerned that no eligible voter is disenfranchised in the March 28 and April 11 elections.
The vice president, who stated this when he met with members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kano State chapter, was making clarification on the perceived opposition of the ruling party to the use of the card reader,
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.
“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 let’s do this thing properly”.
Mr. Sambo noted that since 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan had advocated free, fair and credible elections with his administration’s slogan, “one man one vote, one woman one vote and one youth one vote”.
He said, “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”, he stated.
“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”.
The VP added that, as a party, PDP believes in the rule of law, which is why the president 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”, he noted.
Sambo further hinted that he met the Kano NUJ to inform them about the inroads the administration had made in positively transforming the socio-economic wellbeing of Nigerians.
He said the administration had also delivered on all its campaign promises, and have not failed Nigerians, stressing that they are poised to do more.
The vice president then went on to list some of the said achievements to include areas of power supply, education, transportation, security, agriculture, fight against corruption and corrupt practices, industrialization, job creation as well as security.
Sambo thanked the journalists for their support to the administration, even as he 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 insurgency.