The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Monday, June 15, 2015 reviewed his tenure as the chairman of the electoral body.
He stated that his leadership performed well adding that his only regret was that he couldn’t succeed in creating a special salary structure for the staff of the electoral body despite his efforts.
Speaking in Abuja, during a retreat organised for the electoral officers of the commission, Jega noted that the workers faced difficult challenges in the course of the just concluded polls.
He reviewed the 2015 elections during the event tagged, “2015 general elections: Lessons and the way forward.”
He said, “We have done our best as a commission under very difficult circumstances and the major regret as I have always acknowledged is that a major undertaking we made when we first resumed at the commission is to have a separate salary structure for the members of staff of the commission but we have not been able to achieve this.
“And obviously this is one area where we still have to do a lot of work and put in a lot of efforts as we move towards the future and to improve.
“But apart from that, I don’t think we have done badly in terms of promoting the welfare and the wellbeing of the members of staff.
“We have ensured that salaries were paid regularly, we have ensured that there are a lot of opportunities for self improvement through the organisation of seminar and workshop with our partners.”
Jega further added that it was impossible for the commission to please everyone citing that some persons were aggrieved after the commission redeployed some of its workers.
He said, “Again as I said, we could not have satisfied the expectations of everybody, we believe that we have done our best. I must say that not all of you are happy with some of the measures that we have introduced as a commission.
“The restructuring and reorganisation certainly could not have satisfied everybody because it required trimming down the size of the commission and also redefining schedule of responsibilities and putting square pegs in square holes as we called it at that time.”
According to Punch, Jega said that the 2015 general elections were better than those of 2011, even though he stated that there was a lot of room for improvement and that as the country prepares for future elections, the commission must begin to reflect on what areas of further reforms it should focus its attention on.
He said, “I think not many of us in this room would need a reminder, but it is important that we remind ourselves that the success of the 2015 general elections was as a result of the tremendous effort and undertaking of many of us to learn from our mistakes, to take measures to learn from those mistakes and to continue to do our best for our country.”
