Former President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed that he considered halting the 2015 general elections after the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) card reader system repeatedly failed to recognise him, his wife, and his mother at their polling unit.
Speaking in a recent interview, Jonathan described the incident as deeply suspicious, claiming that while voters in the South were frustrated by card reader rejections, the North was instructed to allow voting without accreditation.
“In 2015, the INEC card reader rejected many voters in the South, including me and my wife. Meanwhile, in the North, people were allowed to vote freely. So you could see something was not quite right. I could have stopped the election,” Jonathan said.
He added that the political atmosphere at the time was highly volatile, with deep North-South and Christian-Muslim divides, alongside persistent coup rumours.
Jonathan also revealed that his life was under threat during the period, but he refused to leave the State House for safety, fearing any attack outside might be manipulated into false narratives.
“If anybody wants to kill me, it’s better they kill me in the State House so Nigerians will know. If I stayed in a guest house and something happened, they could twist the story like saying ‘Indian girls brought apples to kill me.’ I didn’t want those kinds of stories,” he said.
