Former chairman of Independent National Electoral (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, may have been penciled down for the vice presidential candidate of Labour Party. This hint was made by a reliable source within Labour Party who confided in CEOAFRICA that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party, has firmed up arrangement to have Jega, a former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as his running mate.

Although Labour Party has filled in Dr Doyin Okupe as a placeholder for the Vice President to meet up INEC submission deadline for the 2023 election, it is expected to substitute Dr Doyin Okupe with Prof Attahiru Jega,. This arrangement will be made public soon in the coming weeks in a formal announcement. The INEC deadline for the final replacement is july 2022.

In his recent speeches, Obi has been lamenting the plight of university lecturers and Nigerian students who have been at home for several months since ASUU declared its current strike. A plight he described as not only bad image for our universities globally, but also detrimental to our education system in general.

Born on 11 January 1957, Attahiru Jega is also a former Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano. On 8 June 2010, he was nominated by then President Goodluck Jonathan as the new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as a replacement for Professor Maurice Iwu, who vacated the post on 28 April 2010.

Jega was the only INEC chairman to oversee two Nigerian General Elections (2011 and 2015). Jega retired on 30 June 2015.