News Editor
Peter Jerome
A former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has described Nigerian leaders as greedy citizens who are desperate for either power or money. He said that the country is afflicted with the plague of bad governance emanating from visionless leaders elected to public offices.
Jega, who made this remark in Lagos during the first memorial lecture in honour of the first civilian Governor of Lagos, late Alhaji Lateef Jakande, as organised by Federal Social Democrats (FSD), added that democracy in Nigeria is in trouble owing to a lack of selfless and patriotic leadership across the three tiers of government in the country.
The former INEC chief noted that Nigeria would only exit the current security and economic challenges when there are selfless and visionary leaders.
He said, “We must first and foremost acknowledge that Nigeria has been afflicted by the misfortune of having characters in governance who are neither selfless nor visionary, who are rather greedy whether for power or money who are essentially clueless about matters of governance and reckless in the way they handle governmental affairs and consolidators of bad democratic governance.”
Prof. Jega was the INEC chairman that conducted the 2015 general elections that brought in the now ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).
