Our reporter/ The appearance of Bola Tinubu, the Presidential Candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), on Monday at the Chatham House in London took a dramatic turn as he delegated some members of the party to respond to questions posed to him.
Tinubu was in Chatham House to speak to Nigerians in the Diaspora on why he should be elected in 2023.
After his presentation, some members of the audience asked him some questions bordering on insecurity, oil theft, education and economy and how he planned to address crises in those areas if he became president.
As he was asked by the moderator to respond to the questions, Tinubu said he would assign some members of his entourage to do so.
He assigned Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State to speak on how his (Tinubu-led) government would address insecurity and asked the Director of Strategic Communication of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Aleke, to respond to the question on oil theft.
Tinubu also delegated a former Commissioner for Finance in Lagos State, Wale Edun, to respond to a question on how he (Tinubu) would boost the economy if elected.
Discredits INEC
Tinubu, had earlier in his address expressed lack of confidence in the method being deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2023 general election.
According to him, INEC has yet to assure him that the technology it is deploying for the polls is “reliable, dependable and assuring”.
To reduce rigging or manipulation in Nigeria’s elections, INEC had advanced its use of technology by introducing technological devices such as the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IRev) for accreditation of voters and transmission of election results, respectively.
The technological innovations was successfully deployed for the conduct of the last Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.
However, speaking on Monday, Tinubu expressed lack of confidence in the new process.
The APC candidate spoke while responding to a question on if his administration will push for diaspora voting if elected president in 2023.
“I think it was El-Rufai last night that mentioned that diaspora voters are entitled to voting, Tinubu said in response to a question on the issue.
“If you make contributions to the economy with remittances that you have been making, your right to vote should not be abrogated but promoted. However, we are still building confidence in our democratic and voting system.
“INEC is still yet to assure us during this election that electronic transmission, the technology being used for accreditation and, you know, the total vote count is reliable, dependable and assuring in our democratic process — before we introduced a complicated element of mail-in ballots and all that,” he said.
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