Prominent northern politician and elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai has disclosed that massive rigging took place in the northern part of the country in the 2015 general elections which saw the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Yakassai revealed the electoral fraud to newsmen when he led a delegation of the newly formed Northern Leaders Stakeholders Assembly (NLSA) on a courtesy call on former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida at his Hilltop Mansion in Minna, the Niger State capital on Sunday.

According to him, while the electronic voting was religiously observed in the southern part of the country, there were electoral manipulations in the northern part as the electronic voting was discarded.

His words: “When the electronic voting was introduced, I was in support of it, but I observed what happened in the 2015 general election and I changed my mind. This is because it was religiously observed in the southern part of the country, but it was not so religiously observed in the northern parts of the country. It was from that moment that I began to have some reservations about the electronic voting pattern.

“There are many ways of rigging election. What happened in 2015 where majority of southerners resident in the north were scared away from their places of residence where they had registered, to their places of origin and therefore could not have the opportunity to vote, was rigging.

“Again some of the southerners who did not run away were afraid to come out and vote on the day of election. So scaring people from coming out to vote for the candidates of their choice is also a form of rigging.”

He lamented that most leaders of northern extraction had for long taken the support of northerners for granted, stressing that henceforth, it would not be business as usual.

Earlier at the meeting, Yakassai intimated Babangida with the objectives of the organization which he said were mainly dedicated to the unity and progress of the north and the nation at large.

Present at the meeting were Senator Joseph Waku, Alhaji Ghali Na’Abba, Dr. Mohammed Data, Alhaji Abba Gana, Hajiya Inna Ciroma, Alhaji Bala Mohammed, Dr Umar Babangida Aliu among others.