Former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, on Tuesday, took a swipe on the Bayero University, Kano lecturers for allegedly conniving with politicians to undermine the integrity and outcome of this year’s Kano elections.
DAILY NIGERIAN reports that BUK lecturers had severally come under stern criticisms for their roles in the last governorship election that produced Governor Abdullahi Ganduje as the winner in the state.
Speaking at the 15th yearly conference of the Fulbright Alumni Association of Nigeria at BUK, decried how prominent politicians in Kano “penetrated the academia to commit irregularities”, Saying that the lecturers had betrayed the confidence the electoral body reposed in them.
He said: “Look at what happened during the last elections, and the story of irregularities being spread even in the four walls of BUK. The politicians, through crooked means, got alliances with lecturers in the university to compromise the system and they perpetrated all sort of irregularities, which pave way for a faulty process for the continued entrenchment of bad people in governance.
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“Maybe, I am preaching to the converted or I am talking nonsense but frankly speaking, I am beginning to think that we are not taking the obligations of scholarship and intellectual engagement with the seriousness it deserves.”
Mr Jega added that not every university teacher had the integrity to add value to the polity, calling on the country’s scholars to join the crusade of entrenching good governance in the country.
“I think the major crisis in Nigeria’s democracy is that our electoral integrity has been under assault, compromised and undermined by those who have control over the process,” Mr Jega noted.
