Balarabe Musa: Jega welcome in PRP but…

The Chairman of Board of Trustees (BoT) of Peoples Redemption

Party (PRP), Alhaji Balarabe Musa, yesterday spoke on the immediate past Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega who recently joined the party. The former Kaduna State governor spoke when Senator Shehu Sani paid him Sallah homage at his residence in Kaduna.

He said PRP was among the political parties de-registered during Jega’s tenure as the INEC Chairman.

“When three months ago the party’s chairman, Alhaji Falalu Bello told me that Jega was showing interest in joining the PRP, my reaction then was that he is welcome. We have opened up the party for everybody to join,” he said.

“Then about one or two weeks ago, I learnt from the media that Jega has actually joined the PRP; I welcomed him and feel that he could be very useful for PRP. But we have to exercise care and caution because who is Jega? Jega was chairman of INEC and under his chairmanship PRP was deregistered and it was a struggle for us.

“We went to the court, the court reinstated us and we still had problem of exercising our fundamental right in spite of court decision. We even obtained favourable judgment to prosecute the INEC chairman for contempt of court and the INEC still refused to give us recognition.

“Now the same person who deregistered us is now coming back to PRP. We can’t reject him because we have opened up and the party is a public property…He has shown interest and he is welcome to the party. But as I said, we have to exercise care and caution,” Musa said.