By Ola  AJAYI, Ibadan
National Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said yesterday in Ibadan that the 2011 polls would have grave implications for the country. He said this at a lecture a lecture he presented at the University of Ibadan yesterday.

While speaking on the lecture entitled “The role of citizens in ensuring free, fair and credible elections” organized by the Advancement Centre of the institution, he said with the unimpressive outcome of the 2007 elections, all hands must be on deck to ensure that the forthcoming election succeeds.

Jega said, said, “There are many legitimate grounds giving rise to apathy and indifference among the citizens. The failure of the system, especially the governance processes, to advance and satisfy popular needs and aspirations largely accounts for this”.

According to him  the massive and reckless abuse of trust by those entrusted with the management of collective national resources and common affairs  had engendered a feeling of hopelessness.

As a result of this hopelessness, people are forgetting how collective resolve, collective undertaking and collective engagement have historically been the panacea for the resolution of problems collectively faced.

“No doubt, INEC has a very important role to play in bringing about free and fair elections, it is nevertheless a collective task for all Nigerians. It is therefore regrettable that in Nigeria today, there is palpable lack of citizens involvement with and engagement in the political processes generally and in the electoral processes in particular. A large number are partially if not totally disinterested in or excluded from politics and the political process’.

According to him, though successive failure of the Nigerian system by leadership problem created apathy in the minds of the people as a result of massive and reckless abuse of trust in the management of national resources, there was the need collective resolve by stakeholders to participate and entrench credible leadership.

‘The failure of the system, especially the governance processes to advance and satisfy popular needs and aspirations largely accounts for this. the massive, reckless abuse of trust by those entrusted with the management of collective national resources and common affairs has engendered a feeling of hopelessness, so much that, people are forgetting how collective resolve, collective undertaking and collective engagement has historically been the panacea for the resolution of problems collectively faced’.

The former ormer Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, advised Nigerians to  do all they can to make amends in the coming election.