The Chairman
of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said on
Wednesday that the commission would not allow security operatives to be masked
during the 2015 general elections.
Jega said
this in Abuja during an interactive session with both local and international
civil society organisations involved in monitoring elections in the country.
He had on
Tuesday, during the public hearing organised by the House of Representatives on
the bill for the amendment of the Electoral Act, 2010, backed a proposed
amendment that would confer the exclusive power to manage and assign security
men during elections on INEC.
The bill also
sought to limit the role of the military during elections.
Jega told the
CSO representatives on Wednesday that the emerging trend of security operatives
wearing mask during elections was worrisome.
According to
him, the wearing of hood by security men during elections is not in tandem with
the principle of transparency guiding the conduct of an election.
He said, “In
recent times, we have witnessed an increased presence of hooded security
operatives during elections. This is an emerging trend which is highly
worrisome and which needs to be addressed in good time.
“Security
agents who are deployed on election duties should not be masked, the doctrine
of transparency requires that they should be identifiable.
“We will not
allow such persons during the 2015 elections. Any security personnel deployed
for the election must be someone identifiable such that if anything happens we
will be able to know who to hold responsiblem
Jega also
decried the over-zealousness of some security agents during the August 9
governorship election in Osun state.
He disclosed
that security operatives had erroneously arrested some members of staff of the commission
and nine youth corp members, engaged as INEC ad-hoc staff, were erroneously
arrested and kept in detention for over 12 hours.
He said that
they were arrested around 9pm on the eve of the election while on their way to
the Registration Area Centers, RACs, which was provided for them by the
Commission.
“They were
not released until about 6am the next day, a situation that almost disrupted
the distribution of electoral materials in some areas.
“It was sheer
luck that we still managed to open the polling units early, otherwise, there
would have been disaster. We took a serious view of that and reported the
matter to all the appropriate authorities because at a point we became worried
that some persons wanted to undermine our effort.”
He however
maintained that the perceived over militarization of the just concluded
governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states, did not deter electorate from
voting for their desired candidate.
He said, “In
fact, the two elections proved that there was a high correlation between the
massive deployment of security and the willingness of people to come out and
vote.
“Apart from
over-zealousness on the part of some of the security men on the field, we
discovered that people actually felt more secured to exercise their franchise.
The key lesson our politicians need to learn from the two elections is that the
era has gone when they relied on corrupt electoral officers or security agents
to manipulate elections.
“In this era,
any politician that intend to win election must reach out and convince the
voters, be it through ‘stomach-infrastructure’ or otherwise. The only guarantee
to win election now is to let the voters come out to vote for you, which in
turn means that you must first of all convince them on your credibility.
He also
disclosed that prior to the Osun State election, some “unscrupulous elements”
had attempted to use software to rig the poll.
He said, “We
discovered that some people had invaded our system with software that was
reducing age on the register. Thank God that we discovered it before it was too
late and had to put aside the register and produced another one, even though it
was at a very high cost.
“Despite the
challenge, the Osun State election has been adjudged as one of the best we have
conducted recently when judged by all variables for assessing a successful
election. Though the election was not perfect, we however did a lot to improve
on the Ekiti election.
“It is also
worthy to mention that before the Osun election, security agents were able to
identify thugs that were imported into the state by politicians.”
Tags
Politics