Attahiru Jega, said on Wednesday that the commission would not allow
security operatives to be masked during the 2015 general elections.
Jega said this in Abuja during an interactive session with both local
and international civil society organisations involved in monitoring
elections in the country.
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.
According to him, 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 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 responsiblemJega 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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