The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Monday reviewed his
tenure as the chairman of the electoral body, saying his only
regret was his inability to create separate salary structure for
those working with the commission.
Jega spoke in Abuja during a retreat organised for the
electoral officers of the commission where the 2015
elections were reviewed.
The retreat was titled “2015 general elections: lessons and
way forward.”
Jega also declared that the staff of the commission were
subjected to difficult circumstances during the course of the
2015 elections.
He said apart from the special salary issue, the commission,
under his leadership, performed well.
But he regretted that despite the undertaking he said he
made when he assumed office on the need to create special
salary structure for the members of staff of the commission,
he was unable to accomplish that up till now.
He said, “I must say that we have been mindful of the need
to keep on motivating the staff to keep on improving
condition of service and condition of work. And to keep on
improving the welfare of the staff.
“We have done our best as a commission under very difficult
circumstances and my major regret, as I have always
acknowledged, is that a major undertaking we made when we
first came in as a commission, which is to have a separate
salary structure for the staffs of the commission, we have
not been able to get.
“And obviously this is one area where we still have to do a
lot of work and put in a lot of effort 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 well-being of the
staff.
“We have ensured that salaries were paid regularly, we have
ensured that there are a lot of opportunity for self
improvement through the organisation of seminar and
workshop with partners.”
He said he was aware that there was no way the
commission could satisfy everyone, saying that some were
not happy when the commission moved some of its members
of staff to different departments.
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 perhaps 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, putting square pegs in square holes as we
called it at that time.”
Inspite of all, he said he was of the opinion that the outcome
of the restructuring and reorganisation had been beneficial to
the commission.
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