2015 election: TMG says it rejected N2bn bribe from Jonathan

The Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) has alleged that agents from the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan offered them a N2 billion bribe, in the heat of the 2015 general election, to get them to compromise the outcome of the poll.

The coalition made up of about 400 civil society organizations said the inducement was to get them to to take into their fold, about 50,000 agents of the PDP to be fielded as TMG observers.

The group in a statement on Friday signed by its chairman, Comrade Ibrahim Zikirullahi, said the “dubious proposal”, was rejected “with the realization that a good name is better than silver and gold.

The statement read in part, ”Specifically, some errand boys from the Presidency at the time came to us with a dubious proposal that 50,000 agents of the PDP be fielded as TMG observers.

Read also: EXCLUSIVE: N23.29b bribery scandal: EFCC goes after oil chiefs, as bank, INEC officials refund N408.7m

“In financial terms, the errand boys expressed the Presidency’s readiness to fund the fraud with the sum of N2 billion Naira. We stoutly rejected the Greek gift,”

He also said that the TMG has now been “vindicated by the latest revelations from the EFCC about how some INEC chiefs and election monitors shared from N23.3 billion slush provided by former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke.”

He further explained, that “The participants in this grand scale bazaar had only one objective: to subvert the electoral process, undermine the votes of the Nigerian people and rig in their paymaster.

“It is utterly shocking that people entrusted with the sacred and heavy responsibility of superintending the electoral process would descend so low to stake the credibility of a critical democratic institution on the altar of quick enrichment.

“In any case, the TMG had always known that the day of reckoning would come for all those who sought to exchange the sacred position they occupy for a mess of pottage.

“The bigger tragedy is the case of so-called civil society organizations which threw the very basis of their credibility as election observers to the dogs.

RipplesNigeria …without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now