The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission, INEC, Prof.
Attahiru Jega has said the commission would not allow
the usage of masked security operatives during the 2015
general elections. Jega who said this yesterday, in Abuja
during an interactive session with both local and
international civil society organisations involved in
monitoring elections in the country noted that 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 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.
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.”
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