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| Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh | credits: http://www.nigeriancurrent.com/ |
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.
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