Former President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed that he could have halted the 2015 general elections after facing repeated failures with the INEC card reader system.
Speaking during a recent interview, he disclosed that the card reader rejected him, his wife, and his mother at their polling unit.
“In 2015, the INEC card reader rejected many voters in the South, including me and my wife, causing frustration. Meanwhile in the North, instructions allowed everyone to vote without accreditation. So you really see something not quite right. I could have stopped the election,” Jonathan said.
He described the situation as highly tense, noting the North-South and Christian-Muslim divides at the time.
Jonathan also revealed that there were daily rumors of a coup and that his life had been under threat.
“If anybody wants to kill me, it’s better you kill me in the State House so Nigerians will know that they assassinated me there. I had not committed any offense,” he said.
Jonathan said he refused to stay in a guest house for safety, fearing that any attack outside the State House could be falsely attributed to others.
“If I decided to go and stay in a guest house and wherever I’m going, security people would know. And if people go and kill me there, they will now say Indian girls brought apples to kill me. And I wouldn’t want those kind of stories.”
