Update on Jega's sack: Confusion as FG remains non-commital

The Federal Government on Friday further compounded fears in some quarters that the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, could be sacked before the new dates of the general elections.

In an answer to enquiries on government’s stand on allegation that the INEC boss would soon be asked to proceed on a terminal leave, the Federal Government through the Minister of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke, gave a rather ambiguous answer.

He said the exit of Jega from the chairmanship of the INEC would take a natural course. Duke, who is also the supervising Minister of Information, spoke with journalists at the headquarters of the Ministry of Information in Abuja on Friday.

While answering a question on whether the Federal Government planned to send Jega on terminal leave before the expiration of his tenure in June, Duke said:

“On the issue of the INEC chairman, I align myself with what the President said that he has no plan to sack the INEC chairman.

“That is not to say that if it is time for the INEC chairman to naturally exit his office, then the natural course of things will not take place.

“It is like saying a civil servant has done 35 years or achieved the age of 60; we now begin to say that he must not retire or he must retire. I think all of that is in the terrain of the Presidency and he has spoken. I have nothing to add to that.”

But members of the All Progressives Congress in the Senate and the Northern Elders Forum said that they would resist the plot to sack Jega from INEC as he is not a civil servant who goes on retirement.

“We have received information from a very credible source that next week, the INEC Chairman will be given a letter from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service to proceed on a terminal leave,” they said.

Jega’s term ends on June 30, 2015, but it is obvious that some people don't want him there anymore.