Getting this interview done came with its own peculiar circumstances. After ceaselessly speaking with Kayode Idowu, a colleague and Chief Press Secretary to Professor Attahiru Jega, national chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and agreeing on an appointment for Thursday, Sunday Vanguard landed in Abuja earlier that day only to be told the appointment might no longer hold. Shocking! 
However, after much persuasion and Jega, coming from a background of immense accommodation, agreed to talk to Sunday Vanguard but with a caveat.  That, you need not know!
In this interview, the first since his appointment as INEC boss, Jega spat fire. Words like ‘sanction’, ‘penalize’, ‘deal with such individuals’, ‘criminal offence’, were freely used by Jega to demonstrate his resolve to deliver to Nigerians a credible election.
His words: “As far as I am concerned, what I am saying is that if I have more time, I will deliver a better result; if I have less time, though it will be difficult for me but we will still have something better than what we had in 2007.  Being better than 2007 may not be what we need or what will satisfy the aspirations of Nigerians but Nigerians will know that we have done something better than before.  We will do our best under the circumstance.  Beyond 2011 elections, having made all these  massive procurements that we want to make, we will be in a position to present to Nigerians a better voter register on which we can continue to improve and clean up so that any election beyond 2011 will also be qualitatively better than 2011”.
The new INEC boss also spoke of his grand plan and vision just as he cleared the air on some falsehood that had been published about him and activities around him. Excerpts:

 By Jide Ajani , Deputy Editor,

This one that you are having meetings with people; tell us, did you meet those people they said you met: Chief Anthony Anenih and Alhaji Sambawa?

I did not meet Anenih or anybody called Sambawa. Somehow, somebody just sat and created that story and gave it front page treatment and also put my photograph.

Some of my friends have said I should stop speaking but holding this position there is no way I can’t speak.  I must speak but when I speak I will make sure that I am very clear, believing that things would not be taken out of context.

I did not meet these people.  And people who have read the story may not read the correction if there is any.  The challenge is to do the right thing from the beginning.  This is not a seminar but it is good to clear the air.

What was the situation you met on ground when you took over?
The impression I got when I took over was that there is a lot of work to do in terms of re-organising INEC, in terms of bringing in credible and very good staff, in terms of changing the mind set and the attitude to work and the actual work itself.  Even though I had a clear vision in my mind about the job, I didn’t realize that it is that complicated because suddenly we were confronted with constitutional amendment which had tightened the time schedule within which we were expected to do our work.  But these are clear challenges in life.  They make life more difficult and luckily from what I have seen, things might be difficult and challenging but not impossible if we at INEC put our minds to doing it and if Nigerians work together with us, we can show a remarkable difference.

Grab  a copy of  Sunday Vanguard August 1, 2010 edition for the full interview, the Story Of The Week, other juicy stories and exclusive reports.