Many did not know that JEGA was working for APC to install Buhari - see an example of this below. But GEJ threw a master stroke using the army and JEGA's obvious incompetence in readying for the election as excuses to checkmate both JEGA and APC. The army, the custodian of national security, has claimed they cannot ensure a violence free election at this time. Apparently they have a big role to play in the security surrounding the election. So no security, no election.

Interestingly, JEGA's tenure ends in June and he is required to proceed on terminal leave 3 months before then. Effectively, he will not be the one to eventually conduct the election as GEJ will not be renewing his appointment.

So the question is this: Do you think that Prof. Jega has a choice but to comply with the civil service procedure by proceeding on his three months terminal leave with effect from March 1, 2015, since he is expected to retire on June 13?

North/South division tears INEC apart

on October 19, 2014 / in Politics 1:50 am / Comments














30,000 PUs: Jega, commissioners’ stormy meetings

By Jide Ajani

If there were doubts as to he real intentions behind the determination of Professor Attahiru Jega, National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to foist on Nigeria an electoral process that gives unparalleled advantage to his northern part of the country through the instrumentality of a lopsided allocation of some 21,000 Polling Units, PUs, as against slightly over 8,000 PUs for the states of the South, the doubts disappeared at his ast week’s meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs.

*Jega
*Jega

At that meeting, like a “pulpit bully”, and against convention where decisions at INEC are reached through consensus, Jega insisted that RECs should be involved in the admittedly primitive mode of open voting on a matter that was as controversial as PUs allocation.

This report presents Jega’s systematic approach to see through his scheme, starting with his attempt at power mongering.

MEETING WITH RECs

Driven by a messianic desire to confer electoral advantage on northern Nigeria against states in the South, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, upped the ante last week at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs.

The meeting took place at the INEC Headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja.

It was a stormy meeting, held Wednesday, October 15, 2014.

Inside sources at the meeting expressed shock at what was described as the “pulpit bully” attitude of the INEC Chairman.

Sunday Vanguard gathered that what was meant to be a meeting of minds, where the main focus would be the now controversial lopsided allocation of Polling Units, PUs, turned out to be a farcical engagement, with Jega, practically “coercing the commissioners”

There were 30 RECs in attendance.

What was strange, however, was that the RECs did not know that they were being led into an ambush by Jega, whose proclivity for maximum control of INEC had, sometime last year, seen him write to the Attorney General of the Federation, seeking clarification about the powers of his office (details are provided below).

CONCERN RAISED BY RECs IGNORED

REC after REC, most of those in attendance expressed concern on the PUs controversy and “actually counseled that the idea be shelved until after the 2015 general elections.

“The meeting, which also reviewed the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) and the distribution of the Permanent Voter Card (PVC), witnessed several expressions of concerns by State Electoral Commissioners whose appraisal of the PVC distribution process was mostly unsatisfactory,’’ a source at the meeting said.

“They insisted that the Commission was moving too slowly and that the limited time barely three months left for the election may be insufficient for the exercise if things were not fast-tracked”.

THE DICTATOR CHARGES

The source further disclosed that Jega waxed dictatorial:

“Jega insisted on conflating the time pressure by pressing forward with the much criticized allocation of new Polling Units.

This came against sound advice by some commissioners who warned that given the prevailing public perception regarding the Polling Units allocation, it may raise unnecessary ethnic tensions’’.

“Even when he was reminded of the letter from the Senate Committee on INEC”, the source continued, he was said to have reacted angrily that the letter was not a decision of the whole Senate and has no effect.

Similarly, he was said to have been reminded of the fact that some groups of Nigerians and even a political party have gone to court over the matter and there was need to suspend the exercise, but he bluntly responded that, except there was a court order, the Polling Units must be created.

He may be right on that score: only a court order, in the strictest sense, can stop him, especially based on the seeming messianic inclination.

But more was to come.

For a Chairman who treats some of the commissioners as his staff, Sunday Vanguard learnt that even the letter from the Senate Committee calling for the suspension of the allocation was read on the pages of newspapers like most Nigerians.

The letter has not been discussed at any formal meeting apart from the tangential mention it got last week.

Jega, it was gathered, had also been sent a security advisory given the dangerous dimension the lopsided PUs had taken; but this was ignored.

Even then, it was gathered that RECs from the South-West, South-South, South-East and, interestingly, North-Central, verbally cautioned Jega.

Sensing that the tide was turning against his desperation, the INEC Chairman, the source went on, called for voting which was agreed to.

PRIMITIVE OPEN VOTING

But he ambushed the commissioners by directing that the voting process should be open.

“In the end”, the source went on, “voting was conducted – in which three, RECs who had previously advised against the policy and still maintained their objections, abstained from participating in the voting because they were angry and disappointed that, despite the clear voices of the majority who advised against it, the Chairman surprisingly called for vote thereby allowing the matter to degenerate and brought to a clear-cut sectional dichotomy.

“After the voting, Jega got 13 votes for his lopsided PUs, and 13 votes against.”

But this was a stalemate. Althou it would have been 14 for him but one vote was voided because the administrative secretary who represented the REC from Benue State had his vote voided.

Now, had the three abstaining RECs been counted and the votes of six who did not attend as well as some Administrative Secretaries who did not vote, because they erroneously thought the voting was for commissioners only were taken to account, it was clear even to Jega that he was swimming against the tide of internal and external stakeholder opinion.

Despite this, less than 24 hours after the stalemate, the INEC Chairman directed a Director, one Musa H. Adamu, through a letter dated, Thursday, October 16, 2014, to all RECs, to submit report on the implementation of the PUs in their respective states on or before Thursday, October 30, 2014.

Nuru Yakubu, who is seen as the architect of the allocation, Musa Adamu and Jega himself are all from the North and appear to be pushing an agenda that places undue advantage in the hands of the North against the states of the South.

This was the same way the northern dominated military regimes created for Nigeria the lopsided 774 local governments with the North preponderantly favoured against states of the South; just as state creation has left the South-East geo-political zone with just five states whereas the North-West has seven states.

Meanwhile, the lopsided local governments creation engenders a regime of unequal resource allocation in a nation of clashing socio-political and economic interests.

It is under this same condition that Jega had sought extra-legal platform to capture all available powers in INEC, part of a grand scheme to ride rough shod over his colleagues.

JEGA SEEKS MORE POWERS

To get the legal backing to his enormous power-grab, Jega had written a letter dated June 19, 2013, to Mohammed Adoke, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, asking for clarification on who should be the accounting officer of the body.

He noted: “Since our assumption of office as a new Commission in July 2010, having regard to the fact that neither the Constitution nor the Electoral Act defined the role of the Secretary to the Commission as the Accounting Officer, I have considered myself as such, relying upon provisions of the Procurement Act, particularly Sections 18, 19 and 20 of the Act and Regulations issued by the Bureau of Public Procurement to the effect that in an MDA/Corporate procuring entity, the Chief Executive is the Accounting Officer.

“I have also done this, given the weighty personal liability which the Procurement Act places on the shoulders of the Accounting Officer.

The tradition in INEC had been that a Permanent Secretary was posted as the Secretary, until 2008, when INEC, having regard to the provisions of the Constitution and Electoral Act appointed its Secretary. The functions/roles of the Secretary as specified did not say or imply that he is the Accounting Officer”.

Jega told Adoke that the clarification was necessary in the light of the restructuring and reorganisation going on in the commission as it prepares for what he described as “better, effective and efficient service delivery towards 2015 and beyond”.

He insisted that it was “pertinent to seek this clarification for the avoidance of doubt and in order to put lingering matters to rest.”

The “lingering matters” Jega spoke about, it was learnt, might not be unconnected with what a source described as the frosty relationship between the Chairman and other commissioners over the chairman’s powers.

ADOKE CLARIFIES LIMITS OF CHAIRMAN’S POWERS

In a July 26, 2013 reply to Jega’s request, Adoke declared categorically that the Chairman is not the accounting officer of INEC.

Adoke said: “I have examined relevant provisions of the law particularly, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, the Electoral Act, the Public Procurement Act and extant Financial Regulations in order to determine whether the law has expressly provided for the position of either the ‘Chief Executive Officer’ or ‘Accounting Officer’ of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

“Regrettably, it would appear that no such terminology was used in the statutes examined. Item 14(1)(a) of Part 1 to the Third Schedule of the Constitution only provides that the Chairman shall be the Chief Electoral Commissioner.

The provision does not state that the ‘Chief Electoral Commissioner’ is the ‘Chief Executive Officer.

“I have similarly examined the functions and powers of the Commission as provided for in item 15 of Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the Constitution and sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Electoral Act and wish to observe that these are functions and powers that can only be exercised by the Commission and not by the Chairman or any individual Commissioner except as may be delegated by the Commission under Section 152 of the Electoral Act or item 15(h) of Part 1 to the Third Schedule to the Constitution.”

“Consequently, in the absence of any clear donation of the powers of a Chief Executive Officer or Accounting Officer by the relevant statutes, and in the absence of any evidence to indicate that these functions and powers of the Commission have been delegated to the Chairman, I am unable to come to the reasoned conclusion that the law contemplates that the Chairman of INEC shall be the Chief Executive Officer or Accounting Officer of the Commission,” Adoke explained.

He added that the Electoral Act confers on the Secretary enormous administrative powers akin to those of Directors-General, who are “statutorily the Accounting Officers and Chief Executive Officers of their various Commissions”.

Adoke pointed out that this is what obtains in similar commissions, such as Police Service Commission, National Population Commission and Federal Judicial Service Commission.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/10/northsouth-division-tears-inec-apart/#sthash.EcMWkjgr.iIBDzXqv.dpuf

So is GEJ still clueless?

Adelaide2:
So is GEJ still clueless?

They still don't know what hit them yet.

"President Jonathan is like a mad man with a lighter inside a filling station" - Gov. Sule Lamido (PDP)

egift:
"President Jonathan is like a mad man with a lighter inside a filling station" - Gov. Sule Lamido (PDP)

Your Jega is gone, soon.

the clueless PhD holder still smarter dan d incorruptible and disciplined illiterate Messiah and his noise making disciples...

He's cluelesslymarching back to Aso villa.


ryt naw I wannabe clueless

Ok we have heard. GEJ is not clueless. Now please close this clueless thread.

Jega should be suspected. There's no way the NE which is plagued by insurgency and has had mass displacement of people has 200% more voter's cards than any other region. All of the expected pro buhari areas have record level cards while GEJ's own home state has the lowest in the federation. I know that if a man from Imo was running, it would be madness for Imo people to not vote even if it's not for the person but they're implying a Bayelsa that's even threatening violence is apathetic about this election.

After all these games and winnings, is GEJ still clueless?

Like it or not, he is still a clueless PRESIDENT, is only interested in being in power, and is incapable of handling the nation. Maybe it will take another four years for some to realize that.

GEJ n PDP doing their Best to Set things Country on Fire.This is d real Meaning of CLUELESS.
when their plans back fire only then, their CLUELESS followers will see that massive CLUELESSNESS
But will save the People by Taking them down.

GEJ the Destroyer of PDP

If the truth be told, Jonathan seriously needs to sit up!

How can a sitting president allow the head of the electoral umpire almost scheme him out of power?

Has Jonathan been dozing off in the Villa?

How can Jonathan still condone dead wood ministers that have just refused to carry their side of the weight?

What exactly is Abba Moro, whose purview this oversight falls, still doing in the cabinet? Most of the flak Jonathan is getting today is just as a result of retaining people who cannot earn their keep.

Jonathan must assert his authority in this 6 weeks window.

egift:
"President Jonathan is like a mad man with a lighter inside a filling station" - Gov. Sule Lamido (PDP)

Whatever, I will still vote for GEJ

maestroferddi:
If the truth be told, Jonathan seriously needs to sit up!

How can a sitting president allow the head of the electoral umpire almost scheme him out of power?

Has Jonathan been dozing off in the Villa?

How can Jonathan still condone dead wood ministers that have just refused to carry their side of the weight?

What exactly is Abba Moro, whose purview this oversight falls, still doing in the cabinet? Most of the flak Jonathan is getting today is just as a result of retaining people who cannot earn their keep.

Jonathan must assert his authority in this 6 weeks window.

Wow. I am deeply pained by someone expressing this kind of thought in 2015. I weep for my country. We really need change urgently.

Please explain what regulation or law requires Jega to go on leave before his tenure expires. That should be simple enough? #bsmerchant

#change
#GMB
#APC

Adelaide2:


Your Jega is gone, soon.

Jega isn't going anywhere, Buhari aint getting disqualified, the Election will hold whether you like it or not and Buhari will win then you can go fvck yourself to hell.

Seaen:

Wow. I am deeply pained by someone expressing this kind of thought in 2015. I weep for my country. We really need change urgently.

You are not serious.

The plain truth is that we have not grown to appreciate the kind of liberty Jonathan is making available to Nigeria.

I believe in freedom of speech and civil liberties. However, this privileges have to be calibrated or else they would be grossly abused.

Look at the level of disharmony in the country today. People make incendiary statements at will because there are not safeguards to check excesses.

If we are not careful, this so-called freedom of expression could precipitate events that would compromise our national unity.

Adminisher:
Ok we have heard. GEJ is not clueless. Now please close this clueless thread.

You see now why it's so hard to trust Nigerians? Do you see these distrustful monkeys hailing a process by GEJ that is by every definition cheating?

Crooks I tell you. That's why they don't want Nigeria to change to a clean and orderly society.

Ewizard:
the clueless PhD holder still smarter dan d incorruptible and disciplined illiterate Messiah and his noise making disciples...

He's cluelesslymarching back to Aso villa.


ryt naw I wannabe clueless

That's nice! Let me make you happy, you already are clueless

op, no mind them.

A clueless Biafran doesn't exist.

[size=20pt]Caption This Pic[/size]

mrmetoo1:


That's nice! Let me make you happy, you already are clueless

tnx brof... it pays!

They will now shop for another iwu? smh

ISpiksDaTroof:
You see now why it's so hard to trust Nigerians? Do you see these distrustful monkeys hailing a process by GEJ that is by every definition cheating?

Crooks I tell you. That's why they don't want Nigeria to change to a clean and orderly society.

When you APC guys were busy cloning PVC cards and now withholding the original (INEC-issued) PVC cards of non indigenes (with tendency to vote for GEJ) in Lagos and northern Nigeria, what do you think your opponent should do? Sit back and watch you? Stop being a toddler.

BTW, why are you, a supposed non-Nigerian, meddling into Nigerian affairs? This fake Yoruba man claiming to be non-Nigerian, may sango fire your yansh.

Underestimate GEJ at your own peril


Dull look can be a great mask for a cunning fellow like GEJ

It is good to give these rats some glimpse of cluelessness.

maestroferddi:
If the truth be told, Jonathan seriously needs to sit up!

How can a sitting president allow the head of the electoral umpire almost scheme him out of power?

Has Jonathan been dozing off in the Villa?

How can Jonathan still condone dead wood ministers that have just refused to carry their side of the weight?

What exactly is Abba Moro, whose purview this oversight falls, still doing in the cabinet? Most of the flak Jonathan is getting today is just as a result of retaining people who cannot earn their keep.

Jonathan must assert his authority in this 6 weeks window.

Yes..
Most certainly yes. You hit the nail very precisely. And this is the part where he lets so many of his supporters down.
Jega had almost succeeded.
.
By the way, ur analysis is superb.

Apc wouldn't know what hit them

Interesting.. Gej deceiving his enemies always by acting ignorant and striking when you least expect.. Team Gej! Fresh air continues..