Professor Attahiru Jega was teaching political science before he became the university's vice chancellor. He is noted as an astute intellectual with a strong sense ethics and morality, who couldn't be compromised even by the military of those days. His tenure as ASUU president still stands him apart. Professor Jega was the ASUU president who effectively tackled the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida in the late 1990s. Incidentally, when he was ASUU president, Professor Maurice Iwu was the deputy president of the organization.

He eventually became the Vice Chancellor of the Bayero University, Kano, in 2005, and also a member of Justice Uwais' Electoral Reform Committee. His tenure as vice chancellor is supposed to end in October this year.

Professor Jega is expected to bring enormous confidence and credibility to an electoral body that has suffered very serious credibility crisis in the last few years.