Politicians buying votes are behaving like ‘armed robbers’, says Jonathan

Former President Goodluck Jonathan says politicians who use violence or vote buying to win elections are like “armed robbers”.

Jonathan spoke with journalists after casting his vote in Bayelsa, his home state, on Saturday evening. 

The former president said the conduct of politicians matters during the elections, noting that politics ought to be seen as a “clean business”.

“My wish for Nigeria is for us to conduct a peaceful election,” he said. 

“For us who are politicians, our conduct matters a lot and I always tell politicians that yes, you can win the election through unorthodox means or not. Like using violence to win elections or buying votes and so on but when you do that, you are behaving like an armed robber or a con man. 

“Armed robber makes money through robbery, but everybody knows he is an armed robber. A con man makes money through deceiving people, but everybody knows.  They are not decent members of society. 

“Politicians are supposed to be decent members of society. So we must conduct our prayers clearly, and very creatively so that our supporters, relatives, and so on will know that politics is a clean business and allow people to vote who they want at any level of elections. 

“My plea with the politicians, the security agencies, the INEC workers, is to do their best for the country. The whole world is looking at us.”

Speaking of the performance of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), Jonathan said it was a better development. 

“I don’t think we’re moving backward. We may still have some technical problems.  I am not expecting that the BVAS would work perfectly. But it is a significant improvement and that is an attempt to improve on the methodology,” he said. 

“The only thing I request from INEC is that in terms of distributing materials, they should improve on that. It appears that they are using the same method to distribute materials.”