Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, says the only regret from his tenure was his inability to create a separate salary structure for INEC workers.

Jega said this in Abuja, on Monday, June 15, during a retreat organised for the electoral officers of the commission to review the report of the 2015 elections.

The INEC Chairman regretted that despite the undertaking he made when assuming office on the need to create a special salary structure for the members of staff of the commission, he was unable to accomplish that.

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.”

“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.”

Kolapo Olapoju