Former President Goodluck Jonathan says politicians will stop recruiting thugs, only when votes start to count.
The ex-president also noted that reports coming from Kogi and Bayelsa states are “disturbing”, adding that people are already being killed before the governorship elections scheduled for Saturday.
Jonathan said this when he spoke in Port Harcourt during the presentation of a book by Gabriel Toby, a former deputy governor of Rivers, on Thursday.
He said, “Look at what is happening now; we have governorship elections in two states in Kogi and Bayelsa. The signals coming from both are quite disturbing, ” Jonathan said.
“The use of thugs, shooting guns and our people are already being killed when the voting process has not even started is disturbing. This would not happen if we have got to a point in this country where voter card matters.
” That is why I have always advocated electronic voting. We must go into electronic voting.
” If people these days can transfer billions of dollars from one bank to the other, using electronic means, then I believe that we can do electronic voting perfectly and that will ensure that the use of thugs during elections would not come up again.”
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“My opinion is that people don’t change when they get into political office; we vote people that we don’t know into offices and it is difficult to know the true character of a person; it is hard to understand, but the fact is we don’t really vote people we know. People tend to use different means to get into office, “he said.
“When we develop as a nation to the point where our voter cards matter, where the people can vote, who they believe in, the behaviour of the politicians would change; politicians would stop recruiting group of boys and feeding them like dogs, calling them thugs to be used for elections while their children attend the best universities abroad. “
