The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) , Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Monday said his only regret serving at the helm of INEC was his inability to create separate salary structure for those working with the commission.
Jega made the revelation during a retreat organised for the electoral officers of the commission where the a review of the 2015 elections was also carried out.
During the session themed “2015 general elections: lessons and way forward”, Jega revealed that the staff of the commission were subjected to difficult circumstances during the course of the 2015 elections.
He rated the commission’s performance under his control very high, saying the only grey area was the special salary issue.
“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,” Jega said.
“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.”
He noted that salaries were paid regularly, a lot of opportunities were created for staff 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.
“We could not have satisfied the expectations of everybody, we believe that we have done our best,” he added.
“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.”
However, Jega held that the outcome of the restructuring and reorganisation had been beneficial to the commission.
