The former Military Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubarkar (retd) and former Governor of Niger State, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu have said that the low voter turnout in the governorship and House of Assembly elections can be traced to the outcome of the presidential and National Assembly elections.
The duo maintained that the electorate lost confidence in the process because of what happened on the 25th of February, during the precedential and National Assembly elections.
Abdulsalami, while speaking with journalists at his hilltop residence in Mina, noted however, that he has not gone out to monitor the exercise which was generally peaceful, “I have not gone out but what I heard is that voters did not come out to vote like the previous election”.
The former Head of State who is the chairman of the National Peace Committee said, “I cannot comment on the low turnout because I haven’t gone round. But then this is expected because people got tired sometimes to go and vote and accept the result if they see that it is not free and fair”.
On his part, former Governor Aliyu of Niger State after casting his vote in Minna on Saturday also said that people are unhappy because the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine was not used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as promised Nigerians yet results were churned out.
He said, “With what happened during the February 25th presidential election, we were not happy, the BVAs were supposed to be used but it wasn’t used. Even in Niger State, we saw where BVAS were not used but results came out like people were more than the voting population. If we see apathy today it is as a result of what happened on the 25th”.
Aliyu however, posited that for Nigerians and Niger State people to be happy exercising their franchise, people’s votes must count for democracy to be entrenched in the country, stressing that the culture of doing things the wrong way should stop.
“When something bad is happening, must it be the political culture of this country. We must correct it. The confidence by Nigerians was based on the assurances by the INEC about using machine and electronic voting and passing directly unto the server but that did not happen”.
While many Nigerians are yet to come to terms with what happened in the last presidential and National Assembly election, Aliyu queried, “Yet they are trying to justify this. Why did you tell us that you would use BVAS and you did not use it?
The former governor however, expressed optimism that more people would come out to vote, “For today, I am still expecting that people will come out and if they don’t, it could be justified on the basis that, I have voted but what I voted was not what we saw at the end of the day”.
He stated that Nigeria will continue to have bad leadership as long as money politics is being played. “If we will continue the dollar politics, we will continue to have bad leadership as long as money politics is being played, because few people will continue voting the wrong people.
“If someone tells you that in this 2023 one sachet of spaghetti and two pieces of wrappers will make someone vote for a political party? No one would have believed it, but that is what happened,” he said.
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