APC Disagrees with Yakassai over North’s Rigging Claim in 2015

The Deputy National Chairman (South) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Segun Oni, has rejected the claim by a statesman, Tanko Yakassai, that the North in 2015 took advantage of the malfunctioning card readers to rig the elections in favour of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Yakassai, who is the chairman of the Northern Leaders and Stakeholders’ Assembly (NLSA), had led his group to meet with former military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd), at the weekend and had informed his host that the 2015 elections were rigged in the North because the card readers used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) malfunctioned and had to be discarded for manual voting while those in the South worked and were used in the polls.

Reacting yesterday, Oni, who is also seeking the ticket of the party to contest the forthcoming governorship election in Ekiti State, dismissed Yakassai’s claim as untrue, describing his position as nothing but an afterthought.

Addressing reporters yesterday in Abuja when he came to the secretariat of the APC to pick his nomination form ahead of the party’s governorship primary, Oni said Nigerians actually rejected the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government at the polls in 2015.

Oni said: “I want to say that it is not true. The card reader cannot rig elections. Human beings can rig elections not card readers. I must say that when people are looking for ways to justify their inadequacies, they will look for failures, they will look for faults, so the card reader has suddenly become one.

“The truth is that the people of Nigeria voted overwhelmingly for President Buhari. The people of Nigeria were tired of the PDP, the people of Nigeria were clearly embarrassed by a government that was not just pilfering, it went to the extent of even stealing what was supposed to be the source of its own wealth.

“They were stealing oil and they were selling it into individual pocket. Have you ever heard that? So, if we had a government that was reckless, a government of a president of all us, declaring that stealing is not corruption.”