President Goodluck Jonathan says he is convinced that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will win the gubernatorial and state assembly elections in many states.
Jonathan spoke to journalists after his accreditation at Ward 13, Unit 39 in Otuoke, Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. He said the PDP would do better in the governorship elections than it did in the March 28 presidential and National Assembly polls.
He said: “My conviction is that PDP will do well. It may probably do better in a number of states. In some states our performance will even improve. Even if you look at the last elections, our performance in some states improved. But in some states our performance was a bit low. I think that in the overall, PDP will do well”.
The president, alongside his mother, Madam Eunice, arrived the polling unit at 11am and was accredited within 10 seconds.
On why the card reader accredited him so quickly, unlike in the presidential election, when four card readers rejected his fingerprints, he said: “`It is technology. There must be some minor errors and they have rectified the faults. Although, I am still hearing that we have some problems of rejection but I think INEC has a way of handling their assignment. The most important thing is that elections will be conducted”.
Jonathan, who voted at 1:40pm, blamed the low turnout of voters at Otuoke yesterday on the fact that his people considered the stake for presidential poll higher and that there was no governorship election in Bayelsa.
“Naturally, different levels of elections elicit different interests. Presidential elections are quite interesting. Governorship elections are quite interesting. If we were to have a governorship election in Bayelsa State, the mobilization would have been higher because you need to mobilise the voters to come out. But for state Assembly elections, the interest is not as high as the presidential or governorship elections. We expect low turnout for states that don’t have governorship elections. There is no governorship election in Bayelsa, that is why the turnout may be low, ” he said.
Meanwhile, First Lady Patience Jonathan was yesterday absent at the polling unit unlike on March 28 when she voted alongside her husband.
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