The party’s Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Lawan Shuaib, said the introduction of the card reader device which was effectively deployed during the election in every part of the North did a lot to strengthen the credibility of the polls.
Shuaib, who spoke in an interview with THISDAY in Abuja yesterday, in reaction to the comment made by President Goodluck Jonathan regarding the credibility of the presidential poll result in the North, said the voting process was transparent, insisting that Muhammadu Buhari’s victory cannot be faulted.
“Elections in most parts of the North were free and fair because there was hardly any area where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC’s) card reader machine was not used. We can challenge anybody to go to court and let’s clear and verify every vote cast in the northern part of the country during the last elections.“I challenge anybody including the president. The election in its entirety was credible except in two places. I am saying this because we did not win but in places like Taraba State, the electoral process was manipulated,” he said.
President Jonathan had while giving his assessment of the defeat of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ,suffered in the hands of the APC in the March 28 presidential election, expressed doubt over the credibility of the result especially as it concerns his performance in most states of the North.
“If you look at areas where it appears that the PDP scored so low, PDP cannot get that kind of result. But the elections are over, the country remains. It is not as if Jonathan alone made the sacrifice. It is all of us,” he said.
Speaking about another accusation that Buhari and his party have been carrying on as if they were operating a parallel government, the party chieftain said APC was only preparing grounds for a smooth take- off of the new administration.
The APC national leadership had in its official reaction accused the Jonathan administration of plotting to hinder a smooth handover of power on May 29th.
In reaction to Jonathan’s charge that the APC was running parallel government, the party said it was becoming apparent that the administration would not fully cooperate with the incoming government, despite its public posturing in that regard.
The party described as illogical and strange the claim by the Jonathan administration that Buhari was trying to set up a parallel government simply because he set up his own transition committee and given it its terms of reference.
In a statement issued last Thursday by its National Publicity
Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party also described “as an act of hostility and a patently-misplaced aggression the unnecessary vituperation against the incoming Buhari administration by the Jonathan government, ostensibly because of the terms of reference of the Buhari Transition Committee but in reality part of an orchestrated plot to sabotage the transition.”
But according to Shuaib, APC was only worried that the out- going federal government was not providing it with necessary hand- over information even as time is running out for both sides to tidy things up.
“We are not forming parallel government, what we are asking for is let the out-going team cooperate with our people. First the transition and hand-over process was to commence on April 28 but when we set up our own transition committee, we realised that they were not ready.
“The documents were not ready because what we wanted, the information was not yet available. So they shifted it to May 4. So we are not forming a parallel, we are asking questions and it is important they answer them because we need to address these questions. It is not when we get into office we will find out that somethings were not made available to us during the transition process,” he added
-Thisday