Presidency Breaks Silence On Card Readers

A clear-cut position on the planned use of card readers for the 2015 general polls came from the Presidency yesterday, with Vice President Namadi Sambo declaring that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not afraid of the use of the card readers.
He said the ruling party was rather concerned that no eligible voter is disenfranchised in the forthcoming general elections.
Sambo who stated this when he met with members of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kano State chapter was making the clarification on the perceived opposition of the PDP 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 election.
“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, let’s do this thing properly.”
The vice president explained that since 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan had championed 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”.