Despite the controversy surrounding the need to deploy soldiers for the
forthcoming elections or not, the Independent National Electoral Commission
has included 19 military Generals and 42 other senior officers from the Armed
Forces in its 428-man Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election
Security.
The ICCES was established by INEC to review, coordinate and manage
security during the forthcoming elections in the country.
Other members of the ICCES, according to INEC, are the Police Force,
Department of State Security, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps,
National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency, National Youth Service Corps,
National Intelligence Agency, Nigeria Prisons, Nigeria Customs Service and
Nigeria Immigration Service.
Saturday PUNCH investigation revealed that the 428-man security
committee, spread across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal
Capital Territory, Abuja, include a 61-member contingent of Generals and
officers from the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Air Force.
An INEC document titled: “Information Kit for 2015 General Elections,”
made available to Saturday PUNCH, named the Generals to include
Brig.-Gen. Lamidi Adeosun, who is currently the General Officer Commanding,
7 Division of Nigerian Army in Borno State, and who during the week led
the military to recapture Bama, the second largest city in Borno State;
Commodore O. Odumu; Commodore F.F. Ogu; Air Commodore E. F. Golit;
Brig.-Gen J.E.K.Myam; Air Commodore Charles Oghomiven and Brig.-Gen.
J.S Malu.
Others are Brig.-Gen. A. A. Nani; Air Vice Marshall S. N. Kudu; Brig.-Gen.
A.G. Adeyemi; Brig.-Gen. Osasogie Uzamere; Air Commodore A. A. Jekennu;
and Commodore Godwin Ochai.
Maj.-Gen. Y. M. Abubakar; Commodore S. A. Muhammed; Brig.-Gen. A.A.
Momoh; and Air Commodore Omoyungbo are also among the Generals in the
INEC security committees.
The remaining 42 military officers include colonels, lt colonels, navy captains,
captains and majors.
The electoral body stated in the document that the 428 members of ICCES
are divided among the 36 states and the FCT.
It said ICCES in Akwa-Ibom, Benue, Cross River, Gombe, Jigawa, Lagos,
Niger, Ogun and Osun states are made up of 11 members each. Edo, Ekiti,
Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara have a 10-man ICCES respectively.
Saturday PUNCH investigation also revealed that Abia, Adamawa,
Ebonyi, Imo and Kano states have 12 members inter-agency security committee
each saddled with the responsibility of spear-heading security during the
elections.
While 13-man ICCES will be deployed in Bauchi, Kogi and Nasarawa states
each; a 14-man crack committee will handle security in each of Bayelsa,
Delta, Kebbi and Ondo states.
Similarly, the security committees in Anambra (17), Plateau (17), and the
FCT (16) lead the park in terms of membership.
Borno (eight), Katsina (six), Oyo (nine), Taraba (nine), Yobe (eight), and
Zamfara (nine) are in the lower rung of the security committee membership
ladder.
Speaking recently at a forum organised in Abuja on the Role of Civil Society
Organisations, the Media, and the Police in Mitigating Election Related Violence
and Conflict by the INEC and civil society organisations under the auspices
of UNDP’s Democratic Governance for Development, INEC Chairman, Prof,
Attahiru Jega, explained that the ICCES was established to ensure a violence-
free polls and enhance voters security during the elections.
He said, “We are deploying adequate security agencies to be able to apprehend
and prosecute offenders and the security measures we have put in place have
helped to establish a framework on definite roles of each agency to avoid a
clash of responsibilities.”
The Rivers State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mrs. Gecila Khan, who
corroborated Jega in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, said the
ICCES made up of security agencies in the state had been put in place to
ensure security during the elections.
Khan, who spoke through the INEC’s Public Relations Officer in the state,
Antonia Nwobu, explained that the commission was conscious of the importance
of security during elections, adding that security agents would contribute their
personnel to the committee to ensure the conduct of a successful exercise.
She said, “The commission is conscious of the importance of security in
conducting effective, free, fair and credible elections, hence the formation of
an ICCES.
“This body is made up of all security agencies in the state. The agencies in
this committee will contribute their workforce together under the command and
control of the state. The commission has been visiting and soliciting their
maximum cooperation for the elections and this has been assured.”
The ICCES had, in a meeting on February 23, 2014 in Abuja, emphasised
the need for a strong military presence, particularly in the North-East during
the elections. This came up even as the All Progressives Congress and the
ruling Peoples Democratic Party have been at loggerheads over the legality of
deploying soldiers for the elections.
The Court of Appeal in Abuja, which affirmed Governor Ayodele Fayose of
the Peoples Democratic Party as the winner of the June 21, 2014
governorship election in Ekiti State had described the use of armed forces in
the conduct of elections as a violation of Section 217(2)(c) of the
Constitution and Section 1 of the Armed Forces Act.
It cited and relied on a judgement delivered by Justice R. M Aikawa of the
Federal High Court in Sokoto on January 29, 2015 barring the use of the
armed forces in the conduct of elections.
But Saturday PUNCH had authoritatively reported on February 21,
2015 that President Goodluck Jonathan would not obey the court judgement and
would deploy soldiers for elections.
The Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Prof. Rufa’i
Alkali, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, had confirmed that
military troops would be deployed to protect the lives and property of
Nigerians before, during and after the elections.
Alkali said, “Soldiers, as far back as when Edo State Governor, Mr.
Adams Oshiomhole, was being elected, were deployed and Oshiomhole even with
his radicalism swallowed his pride and came to thank the President for
supporting the elections with adequate security.
“Now, look at what happened in Ekiti State, when they lost they were crying
but when the military was also deployed in Osun and they won they kept
quiet.
“I challenge them to say since they didn’t want the deployment of security
for elections, and soldiers were deployed for the Osun election, I thought they
were going to reject the outcome of the Osun elections but they didn’t. What
the APC is doing is crass opportunism.”
Also, Fayose had said Jonathan would deploy soldiers during the elections,
but the APC insisted that two courts had barred the military from being part
of the exercise.
The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, in a
recent exclusive email chat with Saturday PUNCH , confirmed that
soldiers would play a role during the elections even though they won’t be
deployed in polling units.
He acknowledged that the military would provide peripheral security cordon such
as manning entry points into towns to check the trafficking of arms that could
be used to disrupt the elections.
“They are also positioned in covert readiness for rapid deployment if there is
a security crisis beyond the capacity of the police to handle. The military are
never near polling units,” Idowu added.
According to him, under the platform of the ICCES, the role of the military
has been limited to providing INEC with logistics support.
This, he said, included Air Force planes and Navy boats that will transport
election materials over hazardous or difficult terrains across the country.
Investigation by Saturday PUNCH revealed that some of the Generals
have been affected by the recent redeployment of army officers across the
country.
One of them, who asked not to be named by Saturday PUNCH,
confirmed that he had recently been deployed to Yola to battle the Boko Haram
insurgents.
“My brother, we are in a war front here. I’m in Yola and we are battling
Boko Haram here,” he said on the telephone.
But an INEC source, who craved anonymity, said that this would not affect
the position of the military on the inter-agency committees across the
federation.
“Whoever succeeds the generals in the states they have been moved from will
also replace them on the committees,” the source said.
However, Brig.-General J.E.K Myam, a member of the ICCES in Bauchi
State, told Saturday PUNCH that all Army personnel in the state
are “battle-ready” to provide necessary security back-up during the elections.
Myam said, “Added to the challenges of ensuring security during the elections,
you know Bauchi is one of the states of the North-East where we are
battling the prevailing security challenges. But we are battle-ready as far as
we know.
“We are like a second tier of security during the elections. When situation
arises which the police cannot handle alone, we will come in to quell the
situation.
“We will stand by and watch as situation unfolds. Manning the polling units
is the responsibility of the police and perhaps, the civil defence personnel. We
will be there to back them up when a situation arises which is beyond their
control.”
Meanwhile, a non-governmental organisation, Echoes of Women in Africa
Initiative, on Friday, called on the Federal Government to provide adequate
security for women during the forthcoming general elections.
The group stated this shortly after a road walk to the Edo State Government
House to commemorate the 2015 International Women’s Day celebration in
Benin, the state capital.
The Executive Director, ECOWA, Louisa Ono-Eihomun, said that Nigerian
women, who were among the most vulnerable in the society, needed a secure
atmosphere to perform their civic responsibility for national development.
While calling on the INEC to remain committed to the March 28 and April 11
election dates, Ono-Eihomun noted that a further postponement could lead to
violence.
