Following increased speculations that the Federal Government, through the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, is plotting to send Mr. Jega on terminal leave before the rescheduled 2015 Nigeria elections, President Goodluck Jonathan has made statements insinuating that he can actually sack the INEC boss if he did something.
A statement credited to president Jonathan in response to a question on Mr. Jega read thus; “Except somebody is insinuating that the Chairman has done something wrong. You cannot change an officer, except the person has done something wrong,”.
It is a common knowledge that there has been so many wrongs in the INEC chaired by Jega with many groups calling for the head of the professor citing INEC’s unpreparedness for the elections with reference to the disparities in the production and distribution of the Permanent Voter cards (PVCs), which systematically puts a section of the country at clear advantage over others.
Also, the emerging signal from INEC is that of a divided house as the commissioners accused the chairman of dictatorship, total domination as against his status as first among equals, besides appropriating the role of the commission’s chief accounting officer to himself.
It will also be recalled that during the recently held Presidential media chat, the president stated that he appointed the INEC chairman and all the resident electoral commissioners but also have the constitutional powers to remove them.
The president however reiterated that he no plan to remove Jega, “Government, whether at the federal or state level, president or governor, does not wake up and change somebody, especially somebody like the INEC Chairman, except that person has done something wrong.
“INEC is a very sensitive body. For me to change INEC Chairman Nigerians will ask questions. So, you cannot wake up and change INEC Chairman.”
Be sure to bookmark this page, and check back later as we will continue to monitor the situation closely as events unfolds in the coming days.
