How primed are the security agencies for the general elections, starting with the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 14 and the governorship and state legislature elections two weeks later?
That question is vital, given the grim security challenge in the North east and parts of the Northwest.
On January 12, at a forum organised in Abuja by the African Policy Research Institute, Prof Attahiru Jega, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chair, expressed doubt at the possibility of elections in the Northeast.
“A place like Borno State,” he warned, “unless something is done about those that have been displaced, to be realistic, we must say that it may be impossible to hold elections everywhere, in every local government, in every constituency in these three states (Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, all under emergency) in the Northeast”.
Though Prof. Jega pledged his commission was doing everything to reduce, to the barest minimum, the number of disenfranchised Nigerians, it is clear the key to “something being done” is enhanced security, the forte of the security forces.
So, are the police, the core civil security agency, the Department of State Security (DSS), Nigeria’s version of secret police that has nevertheless become very visible of late and the armed forces (tangentially involved in election matters), well primed for this one? It is not easy to say, though the omens would appear rather grim.
To start with, the security challenge in the Northeast — and to some extent, part of the Northwest like Kano and Kaduna, with their occasional bloody witnesses of sorties from suicide bombers — the military appears to have its hands full.
No less the police, from flashpoints across the country, where hideous violence is already rearing its head. News from Jos, Plateau State, speak of partisans, suspected to be All Progressives’ Congress (APC) sympathisers, destroying a branded campaign minibus belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
More harrowing: another report, from the same Jos, that some youths, reportedly sympathetic to the arrested suspects on the vandalised bus, torched a local police station, allegedly to spring the suspects.
Much earlier, came reports that the PDP could not find drivers to recruit to drive its branded campaign vehicles from Abuja to Kano. To solve this problem, another report suggested President Jonathan was contemplating a presidential order to soldiers to help drive the vehicles.
It is not clear if the President eventually gave the order. But if he did, it would have involved the security agencies in partisan political endeavour, which could further dress these agencies in partisan cloak, in the run-up to the general elections next month.
On the other side, in Rivers, another flashpoint, the APC would appear the butt of hideous violence, from the hands of suspected PDP partisans.
At the kick-off of the campaign of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate, gunmen shot at a vehicle carrying APC supporters to the Adokiye Amaisimaka Stadium venue of the event, injuring the occupants.
A few days later, a bomb went off at the Okrika, Port Harcourt, APC campaign headquarters, with fingers of guilt, again pointing towards suspected PDP partisans. Okirika is particularly symbolic in the menace of violence, which appears set to beset Rivers State.
Okrika is the hometown of the President’s wife, Dame Patience, who picks no bones on her support for Nyesom Wike, the PDP Rivers gubernatorial candidate, to the extent of even openly declaring him the “next governor” of Rivers.
The proposed redevelopment of Okrika and the imperative of Governor Amaechi levelling its waterfront shacks to achieve his goal, was where the Patience-Amaechi tiff first broke into the open. Though the Okrika APC secretariat bombing has elicited a public peaceful protest from local youths, sympathetic to the APC cause, the police say they are still investigating the matter.
Another grim news of violence from the Rivers front: Kingsley Emenike, an APC leader in Ward 19, Obio-Akpor, Rivers, was badly injured by political opponents on Monday night. That is the spectre of violence in the run-up to the elections. And to add salt to injury, the police reportedly arrested the victim yesterday.
How fast the police move to bring to book the alleged perpetrators of violence, in Jos, Plateau State, Port Harcourt, Rivers State and indeed, all over the country, would decide whether or not the elections would be peaceful, free, fair and credible.
Aside from these basic challenges however, the security agencies face pre-poll credibility crises, of their own.
The DSS, for example, twice raided the APC Data Centre in Lagos (despite a court order forbidding it from carrying out a second raid), echoing the United States (US) Watergate scandal, that put paid to President Richard Nixon’s political career and came out with “findings” the APC has dismissed as “hogwash”.
So, have “gunmen” raided the Abuja home of John Odigie-Oyegun, APC national chairman, reportedly holding his family hostage and searching his room, even in his absence, according to a news release by APC national spokesperson Alhaji Lai Mohammed. Was that armed robbery or some covert security operation? The APC is calling for a probe.
Thus, on the virtual eve of a major election, the DSS is perceived, at least from the point of view of the major opposition party, of being “partisan”. No matter the merit or otherwise of that allegation, the DSS is entering a crucial election season, lugging an image problem. That cannot be good for its essence as an impartial agency of state, sworn to fairness, to all partisan divides.
The police too appear entering the period with hardly any less albatross. Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Suleiman Abba, from his rather unwise intervention in Aminu Tambuwal vs. the PDP in the contentious speakership issue and the subsequent police invasion of the National Assembly, has done the image of the institution under him hardly any good.
Neither has the threat by Jelili Adesiyan, the Police Affairs Minister, that he had ordered the IGP and the DSS Director-General, to “arrest” anyone making “inciting comments”, given that the threats were basically directed at President Jonathan’s opponents.
Add the fact that, at both Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, the duo of Adesiyan (Police Affairs) and Musiliu Obanikoro (the erswhile Minister of State (Defence), tried to marshal the security agencies to help skew the polls, does not, in any way, raise public confidence in the security agencies.
For this election to be credible and acceptable to all parties, security is key. So, security agencies must not only be above suspicion, they must be clearly seen to be so.
