While speaking, Goodluck Jonathan stated that he found no reason to probe anyone whether Nigeria’s Democracy had been contravened.
The opposition claimed the military had been tilted to rig the election but the President feels nothing of such happened as he believes the stories are cooked up… This can be found just at the tail end of the article on Wall Street Journal
… Meanwhile, Mr. Jonathan’s other problems are mounting. The tumbling price of oil has been a shock for this nation, whose government gets 80% of its revenue from crude exports, and saved very little of that money under his watch. On Wednesday, the country’s currency, the naira, hit a record low.
Some civil servants have gone unpaid.
Against that backdrop, the president said he was counting on votes from rural Nigeria, where access to fertilizer has become easier under his watch.
“Yes people in the city vote, they make so much noise, but the bulk of the voters come from the countryside,” he said. “For you to know whether I win this election or not, go interview the farmers.”
Mr. Jonathan dismissed other frequently mentioned public concerns. Reports of corruption in the military were exaggerated, as were human-rights abuses, he said. There were few immediate actions needed to clean up the petroleum sector.
The opposition has accused his military of tilting the election his way. Last week, an opposition-leaning website published an audio recording of several military leaders allegedly conspiring to rig a governor’s election that took place in November 2014.
A U.S.-based voice-verification firm, Guardian Consulting LLC, confirmed the authenticity of the tape to a 95% accuracy rate.
Mr. Jonathan said he saw no reason to probe whether Nigeria’s democracy had been contravened. “It’s all fabrications,” he said of the audio. “Why should I investigate things that are not real?”
“It’s very sad,” said Kayode Fayemi, the incumbent who lost that election. “The military has lost any democratic control.”
Concerning the 1.5 million people uprooted by BokoHaram, Mr. Jonathan said the government had provided them with enough funding.
“Whenever you have so many people who are displaced there must be stories,” he said. “Even in our small families, some children get hungry sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you’ve not been feeding them.”
