• CP Columbus Okaro Photo: Sun News Publishing

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His amiable physique belies the aggressiveness with which he marshals his arguments in the court of law.
For the bulky Columbus Okaro, a commissioner of police and head of the legal department of the Nigeria Police Force, the desire to secure conviction against accused persons in court, surpasses any other consideration in the line of duty.

And that has been his major pre-occupation in his over two decades career as a senior cop, rising through the ranks to the position of CP about a year ago. Even as a top police officer, Okaro is deeply in love with the legal profession, where he had acquired a chain of certificates and is at the verge of completing his doctorate degree.

Against the backdrop of active police involvement in the conduct of elections at all levels and the barrage of complaints of rigging and other irregularities filed before the various election petition tribunals, Okaro speaks on the constitutional role of the police during elections and the importance of the testimony of officers and men as election observers for the election petition tribunals to deliver sound judgments.

“The constitution provides that the police shall have such powers and duties as may be conferred upon them by law. The law which provides for such powers and duties is the Police Act. The Police Act vests in police officers the power to arrest any offending citizen, the powers to detain and search his person, the power to search his property, the powers to take his finger prints, to conduct prosecutions in courts of law…the constitution provides that the police shall have such powers and duties as may be conferred upon them by law. One of the laws which has conferred powers and duties on the members of the Nigeria Police Force is the Electoral Act 2006.

The Electoral Act in Sections 124 to 139, created electoral offences. Such offences include impersonation, bribery and conspiracy, dereliction of duty, forgery, disorderly conduct at elections, undue influence, buying and selling of voters cards, among others. The Act also prescribed punishment for these offences and equally empowers legal officers of the Electoral Commission to prosecute offenders.

However, the Electoral Act is silent on who does the investigation of these offences. The silence of the Electoral Act on this important aspect of discovering the author of a crime means that the duty of investigating these offences falls on the police force.

This cannot be otherwise because the Police Act has, among other things, empowered the police to detect crimes. And the duty to detect crime cannot be adequately performed if the power to arrest, power to search, power to take finger print and power to detain are lacking. Apart from these powers and duties, the police are also expected to preserve life and property on election day and generally keep the peace.

Election Petitions
From the provisions of the Electoral Act 2006, it can be seen that an election petition must be a complaint against undue return of a successful candidate. The grounds on which such complaint can be based are that a person whose election is questioned was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest the election; that the election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices or non compliance with the provisions of the Act; that the respondent was not duly elected by majority of lawful votes cast at the election; that the petitioner or its candidate was validly nominated, but was unlawfully excluded from participating in the election. Police and election petition tribunal Section 144(2) of the Electoral Act 2006, clearly states the competent election respondents in an election petition. It provides that “the person whose election is complained of in this Act is referred to as the respondent, but if the petitioners complain of the conduct of an electoral officer, a presiding officer, a returning officer or any person who took part in the conduct of an election, such officer or person shall for the purpose of this Act be deemed to be a respondent and shall be joined in the election petition in his or her official status as a necessary party provided that where such officer or person is shown to have acted as an agent of the Commission, his non joinder aforesaid will not on its own operate to void the petition if the Commission is made a party”.

From that provision, would it not be correct to join the police as respondents in an election petition?
From the decision in Buhari vs Obasanjo (2005), it would appear that police officers not being involved in the conduct and management of elections, need not be made respondents in an election petition. But what happens in a situation where the petitioner alleges that police officers deployed to maintain law and order on election day were actively involved in the rigging and manipulation of election results in favour of the winners of the election. It is my view that in such a situation, it is mandatory to join the Nigeria Police as a party or one of the respondents. This view finds support in the Supreme Court decision in Egolum vs Obasanjo (1999).

In that case, the Supreme Court considered allegations of fraud and other electoral offences made against certain electoral officers who were not joined to the election petition. It was held that the principle of our law is that no person shall be guilty without being given the opportunity to defend himself. Therefore, failure to join the Nigeria Police Force as a respondent might be fatal to a petition where the petitioner alleges that police officers and INEC officials connived to rig election.
The police, even if not a party in an election petition, may be required to give evidence or to tender document in an election petition tribunal.

In the case of Ngige vs Obi (2006), a police handwriting expert was on hand to give evidence as to the genuineness of the to results which declared Dr. Chris Ngige as governor of Anambra state. The tribunal relied on the evidence of this expert to come to the conclusion that Ngige did not win the 2003 gubernatorial election in Anambra State. Section 91 of the Evidence Act provides that a statement in a document is deemed to have been made by a person where the document or material part of it was written, made or produced by him with his own hand, or was signed or initiated by him or otherwise recognized by him in writing as one for the accuracy of which he is responsible. Section 75 of the Electoral Act 2006 requires that result forms at ward, local government, state, and national levels issued by INEC, in accordance with the provisions of the Act or any guidelines, shall be stamped, signed and counter signed by the relevant officers and polling agents at those levels and copies given to the police officers and polling agents, where available. By the provisions of Section 91(4) of the Evidence Act, any of the relevant electoral officers and polling agents required to sign or counter sign election result forms, is a maker of the document.

A police officer who is to be given a copy of a result will not as a matter of strict law, qualify as maker of such document within the provisions of Section 9(4) of the Evidence Act where such documents are sought to be tendered through a police officer, it ought to be shown either that the maker is dead, or none of them is fit by reason of their bodily or mental condition o attend as witness, or if they are out of the country, it is not reasonably practicable to secure their attendance, or that all reasonable efforts to secure their attendance have been unsuccessful.

Fact is, election petitions are in a class of its own, and it has been held in Nnadi vs Ezike (1999), that such result forms given to police officers were admissible in evidence, notwithstanding that they were not the makers of such documents and that it did not really matter whether such documents were sought to be tendered by policemen other than the actual policemen that were given copies of such results. The police are therefore very important in deciding cases by the election petition tribunals, as the testimony of policemen as election observers will go a long way in assisting the tribunal at arriving at a decision on way or the other.