Date: 2015-08-13

Professor Attahiru Jega, former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was recently in Ilorin, Kwara State, where in a brief chat with our correspondent spoke on how he felt returning to the classroom. Excerpts: How do you feel returning to the classroom after completing a very important national assignment as INEC chairman?

p>We thank Almighty Allah for His blessings and for His mercy. It wasn't a difficult thing for me to go back to the university having taught for 30 years. Alhamdulillah, I have done five years at INEC and thanks be to God, people have appreciated that we have done our best to improve the electoral process. So, I was very happy to go back to the classroom, hoping that I would be able to share my experiences and also continue to teach the upcoming generation because we need educated and enlightened people to continue to help in the development of our country. So, I'm very happy, I'm one of the happiest people, I believe in this country, going back to the university, trying to live a private life, and trying to continue to do what I know how to do best, which is to study, to learn and to teach.

What was your trying period as INEC boss?

I think there will be time for me at some point to speak more definitively about my experiences in INEC. This is not the time, and I crave your indulgence not to ask that question.

How do you think INEC can improve on the electoral process in the country?

INEC has come a long way in the last five years. We studied the problem of INEC and we did our best, put measures to address those challenges and problems, and I believe that the next five years will be a period of consolidation of the gains and value addition in terms of doing even better things than what we have been able to do because we were too busy confronting the problems that we could have done more, but we couldn't. So, I believe that the next commission will be able to do even more because we have been able to use the last five years to address a lot of the challenges.

What do you think can still be done to further improve the credibility of elections in the future?

There is no doubt that the introduction of the card reader and permanent voter's card (PVC) has gone a long way in improving the integrity of the electoral process in our country. I am very happy we took the decision to introduce these two elements, which relied on technology to bring integrity into the electoral process. I believe that the card has come to stay. What remains to be done is to continue to clean up the electronic register, to continue to update it and to also improve upon the card reader by addressing all the challenges that we identified during the 2015 general elections. Obviously, when you are using technology, it keeps on improving. So you have to also try to keep up with the changes in the technology. I envisage that we will have to update the software that we used for the card reader. We may also have to even update the software for the database.

But the good thing is that we have very good people in INEC now, who are technology savvy and who will continue to improve upon the use of technology in our electoral process.

With the outcome of the 2015 polls, will you say we have attained international standard in the conduct of our elections?

As I said, we have come a long way in the conduct of elections in Nigeria. We believe that while there is still a lot of room for improvement, we have attained a level in which many countries are now trying to learn from us, and I think that is satisfactory but we have to keep on improving. Obviously, for elections to be ideal, we must continue to meet international expectations, use international best practices and standards and I believe in 2015 general elections, we have used a lot of these. I have no doubt that the future is very bright for INEC in terms of consolidating the electoral reform process.