A new dimension has been added to the conduct of elections. Last week, armed personnel wearing masks were deployed in Osun State for the governorship election. They were carrying sophisticated rifles but their gears were not really the army’s. Who were these snipers? The development is coming against the backdrop of anti-militarisation of election compaign by Nigerians. This and the various challenges in the country have further raised anxiety about the 2015 elections, writes ADEBISI ONANUGA.
Aside from the Boko Haram insurgency in the North, there is another sign that terrorism in gradually goring in Nigeria.
A week to the June 21, 2014 governorship elections in Ekiti State, armed personnel were drafted to the state to carry out surveillance before the election was held.The armed personnel were equipped with helicopters, armoured personnel carriers, patrol vans, sniffer dogs and other gadgets. The then Inspector- General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar, charged them “to respect the citizens’ rights, the rule of law and other rules guiding the conduct of the election”, adding that the Police Code of Conduct must be their guide in the discharge of their duties.
But no sooner did they get to Ekiti that they threw caution to the wind and started assaulting people without any justification. The armed soldiers committed a lot of human right abuses, maiming innocent people, including illegal arrest of those whose names were believed to have been penciled down for arrest, just as they usurped police duties of maintaining law and order before and after the election. Even the Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, was not spared as they shot at his convoy. Heavily-armed policemen and military personnel were visible in almost every entry and exit point of the state ahead of the election.
Expectedly, the action of the security agents received wide spread condemnation. A number of residents outside the capital were disallowed from coming back to town on the eve of the election, thus, disenfranchising them. Some non indigenes and others suspected to be All Progressives Congress (APC) members were harassed and expelled from the state by the “army”, some who are chieftains of the PDP, including two serving ministers, were allowed to “monitor” the election.
Similar acts were repeated in Osun State about two weeks to the August 9, 2014 governorship election. This time, the operatives in army camouflages who were hooded and wore brown boots were seen brandishing weapons. In spite of the fact that they wore military camouflages, the masks and the non-conventional boots (brown colour) they wore made it difficult for people to accept them as real soldiers. This was so because the governorship candidate of one of the parties in last Saturday’s election, was going round the town with masked security men intimidating those perceived to be in opposition.
Reports from Osun State stated that the armed personnel mid-last week took over the venue of a rally organised by workers to show support for the re-election of Governor Rauf Aregbesola. According to reports, stern and gun-wielding security operatives stormed the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park, venue of the rally, as early as 7am and disrupted activities and occupied the place. The securitymen gave no reason for the unlawful occupation of the venue.
Kunle Oyatomi, Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy for the APC in Osun, said more worrisome was the concealment of the identities of the supposed security agents some of whom threatened to shoot those who had arrived early for the programme. And like they did in Ekiti, there were a lot of human rights abuses since they arrived Osogbo. It is these developments that observers of the polity described as “official terrorism”.
In what pundits described as a declaration of war on the citizens of Osun State, about 73,000 armed security personnel from the Nigerian Armed Forces, Nigeria Police Force, State Security Service, Federal Road Safety Commission, Nigerian Prisons Service, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Nigerian Security and Defence Corps were allegedly deployed in Osun State for last Saturday’s election. More disturbing was the masked men, who shot sporadically into the air to intimidate people.
Media reports also said on the eve of the election, many who did not commit any offence were arrested by the armed personnel who played their well thought-out script for the election.
National Publicity Secretary of APC Alhaji Lai Mohammed was arrested in Osogbo a few hours to the commencement of the election. He was said to be one of the many leaders of the party and supporters targeted by the security agents. About 30 students said to be staunch supporters of the APC were said to have been picked up in Ilesa before the election. Also arrested was a member of the state House of Assembly representing Ilesa West, Hon. Fafowora Fafiyebi. In another incident, suspected PDP thugs abducted the state’s Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Adedoyin and the Osogbo Local Government Area chairman. They were released after the election.
Another of such illegal arrests took place at Oke Ila in Ifedayo Local Government Area, where an 80-year-old lawyer, Chief Dapo Fakayode and 50 others were taken to an unknown destination. Femi Falana (SAN) said they were eventually traced to the compound of a retired army captain in a neighbouring town where they were held incommunicado throughout the election.
“Through my appeal to the Police Authorities, Chief Fakayode was released unconditionally after he had spent over 10 hours in illegal custody. But the 50 others were held illegally and prevented from exercising their democratic right to vote for the candidates of their choice. They were only released after the election had been concluded! Several other persons were arrested last night by the snipers. In fact, some of the detainees were brutalised by the state sponsored terrorists. In some polling units party agents were beaten up and chased away by thugs with the connivance of the security personnel,” he added.
Former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo last December, in an open letter, alleged that President Goodluck Jonathan was equipping a killer squad ahead of the 2015 elections. He alleged that no fewer than 1,000 people have been placed on “political watch list” in a bid to achieve his ambition. He further accused the President of secretly training snipers and other armed personnel at the same place that the late Head-of-State, General Sani Abacha, “trained his own killers”.
In an 18-page letter to the President, dated December 2 and titled: A letter of appeal to President Goodluck Jonathan: Before it is too late, Obasanjo accused Jonathan of taking actions that are against the country’s best interests.
“Nigeria is bleeding and the haemorrhage must be stopped,” Obasanjo wrote in the letter, adding that Jonathan has failed to deliver on his promises to stem corruption, and strengthen national unity and security. Jonathan, according to him, is determined to win the 2015 presidential election at all costs.
“Allegation of keeping over 1000 people on political watch list rather than criminal or security watch list and training snipers and other armed personnel secretly and clandestinely acquiring weapons to match for political purposes like Abacha and training them where Abacha trained his own killers, if it is true, it cannot augur well for the initiator, the government and the people of Nigeria,” he further stated.
Pundits reasoned that if Nigerians failed to take heed, then developments in Ekiti and Osun states may actually be a pointer to the fact that a killer squad may actually be on the loose.
This position is further reinforced by the statements creditted to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, who said last week in Lagos that the deployment of armed security during an election does not discourage people from participating in electoral process but, instead, helps to drive people’s confidence to participate in the process.
Citing Ekiti State election, Jega said despite the presence of heavy security during the election, it recorded an unprecedented voter turnout of 49 per cent, which is the highest in the electoral history of Nigeria.
He said: “I want to state that the use of military is not necessarily a disincentive for participation in an election. In fact, Ekiti election that we had and people were complaining of the highest level of military mobilization, had 49 per cent voter turn-out, which is the highest in all the elections we have ever had in this country. This means that the presence of security gave people the courage to come out and vote.”
Observers who watched developments in the two states are suspicious that there may be a sinister motive behind the deployment of masked armed men for elections other than for ensuring peace as claimed by the authority. Many of them feared what might likely happen in 2015 given the abuses perpetrated by the masked armed personnel s before and during the elections in Ekiti and Osun states. Aside from the fact that they considered the deployment of armed personnel as a breach of the constitution, pundits are quick to ask if wearing of mask by “military men” is a new phenomenon in the country.
Reactions
Falana, however, see the development from another perspective. He said under this constitutional dispensation the President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces lacked the power to involve soldiers in maintaining law and order during elections. According to him, the deployment of the armed forces for the maintenance of law and order during elections cannot be legally justified in view of section 215(3) of the Constitution which vested the Police with the exclusive power to maintain and secure public safety and public order in the country.
However, the President is empowered by virtue of Section 217(2) of the Constitution to deploy the armed forces for the “suppression of insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore law order”.
This, in effect, means that before the armed forces may be involved in the maintenance of law and order there must have been insurrection or civil disturbances which cannot be contained by the Police. The Constitution, he said, never envisaged that the armed forces will usurp the powers of the Police with respect to the “preservation of law and order” in any part of the country. I wish to submit that under the current constitutional dispensation the President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces lacks the power to involve soldiers in maintaining law and order during elections. Even in the Northeast region, a state of emergency had to be declared by the President to justify the deployment of members of the armed forces as part of the extraordinary measures he was required to take to restore law and order pursuant to section 305 of the Constitution. Even then, the President had to seek and obtain the approval of the National Assembly for the said deployment for a specific period of time.
Contrary to the positions of the Acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr. Suleiman Abah, the erudite lawyer argued that neither the Police Act nor the Electoral Act has authorised the wearing of masks by security personnel during elections in Nigeria.
He drew the attention of the Federal Government to Section 280 of the Nigeria Police Force Regulations which provides that “Orders of dress and dress regulations, shall be promulgated by the Inspector-General of Police in Force Orders.”
“The Inspector General of Police has neither promulgated that police personnel involved in election duties should wear masks nor published any such dress order in the Police Force Orders. To that extent, it is illegal on the part of the police or other security personnel not to wear name tags for proper identification during election duties,” he stated.
He also observed that in the governorship election in Ekiti State, there was no deployment of security personnel wearing masks. He, therefore, wondered what has warranted the desperate deployment of masked men to police the Osun State governorship election.
Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja branch, Yinka Farounbi said it is illegal and grossly unconstitutional to deploy the army to monitor elections in any part of the country as that assignment purely belongs to the police, and “we were not told the police could not cope.”
“To worsen the violation, no approval of the National Assembly was sought and obtained before the redeployment. Could it be that we are being governed by illiterates who see the fundamental law of this country , the constitution, as mere book meant to dress the shelf rather than for governance.
“As if the illegal deployment of our army to Osun was not enough, some “militants” were seen parading the street to equally monitor the election. I called them militants because their faces were masked. So, why send masked men to Osun?” Farounbi said.
A member of the Ogun State Judicial Council, Abayomi Omoyinmi, said the deployment of masked personnels to both Ekiti and Osun states during elections is against all civil norms and contrary to civil process of electioneering. “I think it is the police that should provide the necessary security.
Otunba Olusegun Otayemi, recalled that the masked men first manifested behind Senator Iyiola Omisore, the Osun State gubernatorial candidate of the PDP as he moved around during the campaign.
“I was shocked when a retinue of so called DSS operatives moved into Osun dressed in black, wielding sophisticated guns and wearing hoods like armed robbers or kidnappers. The act of terrorism is unprecedented,” Otayemi noted.
Way forward
Farounbi said the implication of what the government did in the two states “is that if the army did it in Ekiti and militants in Osun, then gorillas will do it in 2015 throughout Nigeria, particularly for the presidential elections. In fact, the results of 2015 are with us already”, he stated adding any aberration on our laws should not be encouraged in order not to truncate the nations’s nascent democracy.
Omoyinmi said the presence of military men could be intimidating and should not be encouraged under any guise for conduct of election “otherwise we are indirectly extending invitation to the military in our very fragile democracy. The only way to prevent manifestation of such deployment of military for 2015 election is for the government to provide a conducive environment towards preparation for the election. Allow the police whose responsibility is to provide security and prevent breakdown of law and order to perform their constitutional role as oppose to usurpation of their duties by the military”, Omoyinmi stated.
Otunba Otayemi said: “If Jonathan can go this far to get Osun, then opposition parties, civil society groups and everyday voter in Nigeria must brace up for the worst in 2015. We must all rise up to resist this despot! With the level of desperation displayed in Osun, I won’t put anything past him (Jonathan) in 2015.
