President Goodluck Jonathan said yesterday that buying and selling votes in the country’s electoral process had been taking place since 1960 but said that such cannot be allowed to continue and implored Nigerians, particularly the youths, not to trade their votes during the forthcoming election.

Jonathan stated this at the Abakaliki township stadium during the presidential campaign rally staged by his campaign train.
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The president observed that what has been happening since 1960 in the country is a situation whereby people have been “buying and selling votes.”

This is coming just as the mammoth crowd that gathered at the campaign rally prevented Ebonyi State governor, Martins Elechi from speaking at the event. Consistently, they booed him (Elechi) any time his name was mentioned.

Elechi, it would be recalled, lost out in the senatorial primary election of the Peoples Democratic Party while his anointed political son and former minister of health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, was defeated in the governorship primary by the deputy governor, Umahi.

President Jonathan who promised to ensure that Ebonyi gets its share from the federal government wished that a woman emerge as the president of the country and state governors in his lifetime.

He assured that his administration would continue to ensure that whatever was due to Ebonyi State was given to it, even as he observed that, since Ebony was created at same time as Bayelsa, the state had been suffering from certain development challenges.

He said his deliberate policy of appointing women into prominent position was to exposed them and prepare them for greater challenges.
Noting that the youths are the leaders of the next generation, Jonathan urged them not to allow themselves to be to be bought over by politicians who don’t mean well for them.