From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ruled out the use of private security personnel to man polling units during next year’s general election.
Its chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu argued that the police, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), among other were capable of carrying out their duties creditably without the resort to private securities.
He spoke yesterday in Abuja,at a book presentation titled: ‘Post-Election Assessment of Conflict Management Mechanisms in Nigeria, 2019 and Beyond’ by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.
“As far as security is concerned, Nigeria has a formidable security agencies, the police is there, the military is there, the other intelligence agencies are there. So if they are there, why should Nigeria hire private security agencies? We believe in their efficacy; we very much believe in what they can do. And I trust that they will be able to police the nation very well, for the election to vote. Remember that in the election Ekiti and Osun States the police behaved well. They did a very good job.”
The INEC chair, represented by Deputy Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Chuckwuemeka Ugboaja said the electoral umpire would not cave in to threats and intimidation by saboteurs of the electoral process.
He said hackers may try to go into the system to compromise the election portal, but that they wont have their way.
Former Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, dispelled the fears of wide scale violence, arguing that before the 2015 elections, same fear was spread by those who wanted to truncate the exercise.
“All hands need to be on deck. All stakeholders need to be involved so that we can have peaceful and credible elections. Do not forget that before the 2015 general elections, some other groups, in fact, some international so called partners were predicting that that would be the end of Nigeria, and it came to pass that we were able to prove to the world that we could do better,” he said.
Book presenter and member of the board for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, expressed worry that perpetrators of electoral violence hardly get punished.