Juliana Francis
The Nigerian General Elections may have been fought and lost, but many civil society organisations have fashioned out ways for better elections while taking a holistic lens on how the drama played out across the nation during the elections.
One of the CSOs is CLEEN Foundation, which shared its Situation Analysis of Election Security Management and the 2023 Gubernatorial and State Assembly Elections.
The Executive Director of CLEEN, Gad Peter, said the organisation scored the Governorship and State House of Assembly Elections, which held on the 18th of March 2023, higher marks in orderliness.
He said: “CLEEN Foundation Election Security Support Center (ESSC) deployed roving observers to the 108 senatorial districts in the country except for the FCT. The ESSC observed improvements in the deployment of security officers to the various polling units, distribution of election materials, and timely opening of the polls. Despite these improvements, it is sad to note that there were reports of violence in some states.”
According to Peter, the ESSC deployed 109 trained INEC-accredited observers with other credible sources across the country for security-related developments. The roving observers were equipped with the CLEEN Mobile App that enabled the transmission of real-time data to the Election Security Support Centre.
“In addition, CLEEN Foundation set up real-time multi-communication platforms (WhatsApp and Zoom) to receive real-time incidents across the states of the federation where the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly elections took place. These were complemented with secondary information from credible media sources.
“The ESSC received calls and messages from citizens in different states and issues of unprofessional conduct were escalated accordingly to relevant agencies for appropriate action.”
Mr. Ethelbert Oney, a counter-terrorism expert based in the United States, said: “The way and manner the 2023 elections violence occurred requires every Nigerian both home and abroad to shed tears because it was not supposed to be so.
“Election is not a do-or-die affair but because some politicians are desperate for power, they will do everything possible to clinch onto power or they get into power. Now, the election was not the only election that had gone wrong if truth be told.
“Even in the Western world, there is voters’ suppression but the difference is that they do not waste lives and destroy property because they know the value of lives and property and infrastructure in their designated location. But for the Nigerian people, it is absolutely something different and we should be ashamed and worried about this when moving forward.
“The 2023 elections were marred by different kinds of violence and those people who lost their lives are peoples’ relatives; it should not have been so. It is well known that those who perpetuated the violence are those who know that they cannot win elections because if any politician knows that he or she will do well in an election, there would be no point indulging or encouraging violence.”
Oney said that he watched where people urged thugs to go out, beat up people, and snatch boxes, which simply broke his heart.
“Such words are incitement of violence, and it has consequences. But in our part of the world, everything goes mostly with people with such power. They are above the law but, nobody should be above the law,” Oney argued.
The Executive Director of RULAAC, Okechukwu Nwanguma, scoring law enforcement agencies’ performances in the last general elections, said: “I don’t want to give a figure but if you look at the report of some of the election observation groups that monitor police conduct, the conduct of law enforcement agencies, you will see different reports and by the way, there is a standard to access them if they develop what they call standard operational guidelines for law enforcement officers election dating.”
He added: “What we found is that there were few cases where we saw people in police uniform committing electoral violence, but it was not so widespread.
“But what was widespread was the fact that in many cases where electoral violence misconduct was happening, they stood by and did nothing! Some of them say they were not carrying arms, but I don’t think that is a good excuse because the arrangement is that those at the polling units are not supposed to carry arms.
“But if a situation occurs that is beyond their capabilities they have patrol teams they could call in, but they simply watched thugs carrying out those crimes and so for me, I think the performance isn’t satisfactory.”
Peter said: “It must be reiterated that CLEEN’s area of focus on the election is the monitoring of security personnel’s conduct during the electoral process in the country. While commending the effort of all the security agencies which have participated in this process, it is imperative notwithstanding, to mention that the last Gubernatorial election had recorded cases of political violence.
“It can be recalled that CLEEN Foundation in its public statement on the Election Security Threat Assessment alluded to politicians being an unfortunate trigger to violence during the Presidential and Gubernatorial elections. Findings from the CLEEN Election Security Support Center show that widespread violence, ballot box snatching, assaults, fatalities, etc marred the elections.”
He said that ESSC noted the great improvements in the logistical arrangements of INEC compared to the February 25 Presidential Elections as Security personnel and electoral materials were reported to have arrived early.
He further noted: “The ESSC Report showed that at the polling units visited, over 85 percent of security personnel were at their various assignment posts between 6:30 am and 8:00 am.”
He also mentioned electoral killings, recalling that ESSC tracked the killings of people in Benue, Kano, Ebonyi, Cross Rivers, Gombe, and Rivers state, some of the fatalities recorded were a response from security personnel to the act of violence and ballot box snatching by political thugs.
The CLEEN boss said: “For instance, it was reported that an attempt by a political thug to snatch a ballot box in Benue was resisted by security personnel leading to his death.
“The ESSC is particularly impressed by the improvement in the conduct of law enforcement agencies on election duty. At the time of this report, the ESSC noted that Security agencies in Lagos rescued an alleged ballot box snatcher from a mob action while in Imo, law enforcement agencies rescued kidnapped INEC staff. Also, in states like Rivers, Enugu, Plateau, Anambra, and Kwara Security personnel managed to maintain orderliness in the polls.”
Speaking on security deployment for the election, Peter said that it was observed that there was adequate security personnel deployment at both the polling units and surroundings for the conduct of the 2023 governorship and States House of Assembly elections held on 18th March 2023.
However, while most of the polling units had two or more security personnel, other polling units had one or two security personnel while very few had no security personnel. Also, “Armed security personnel were observed patrolling the major roads and kept their distance from the polling units across the country.”
He also noted: “We commend the conduct of the security personnel deployed on duty. The ESSC observed that most security personnel discharged their duty professionally. Similarly, over 90 percent of observers deployed by the CLEEN Foundation reported that security personnel did not use force on voters during the process.
“CLEEN Foundation ESSC is however saddened by the level of thuggery, violence, and voter suppression by non-state elements which was observed in Lagos, Gombe, Edo, Kano, Enugu, Imo, Bayelsa, and Rivers where incidences of voter suppression, intimidation, and thuggery were recorded. CLEEN wants to use this medium to call responsible agencies like the Nigeria Police Force to act decisively and bring violent perpetrators to book.”
Peter opined that the continuous training and sensitisation of security personnel needed to be encouraged as the laws and processes of elections will continue to be revised and improved upon which requires that actors in the security sector remain conversant with the laws and processes of conducting elections.
“There is the need to sustain and continue to strengthen Inter-Agency cooperation during elections to ensure the security of voters, officials, and electoral materials. The prevalence of election day violence has necessitated the need for security agencies especially the Nigeria Police Force to strategize and develop effective ways of mitigating election day violence,” said Peter.
He added that due to the manpower inadequacy of security agencies in Nigeria, there was a need for an intentional deployment of technology to election security management to bridge the gap created by the number of personnel available for election duties in the country.
For future purposes, Peter suggested: “Political parties need to desist from turning the political space to a combative, do-or-die practice where they resort to any means to retain or acquire power at the detriment of public peace and democratic stability in the country.
“Political parties and politicians should be magnanimous in victory and avoid the winner takes it all syndrome by working with Nigerians to make the country a better place for all.
“Politicians should shun all forms of hate and insightful comments and eschew every form of violence by approaching the constitutional means of airing grievances where they feel short-changed by the process Political parties and candidates need to intensify enlightenment campaigns for their followers on democratic and election processes to enhance democratic practice in Nigeria
“CLEEN Foundation is disturbed by the continued resort of some desperate politicians to acts of violence in order to influence the outcome of elections in their favour. The elections have continued to show that politicians are ready to compromise the process and undermine the efforts of security officers in maintaining law and order,” said Peter.
He continued: “CLEEN Foundation commends the security agencies for enhanced professional performance in the recently concluded general elections. It is necessary to call on the government to continue to intensify measures towards enhancing the capacity of the security agencies to respond to election security situations. In addition to continued training, the government should invest in logistics and technology to enhance the knowledge, skills, and operational capacity of the security agencies.”
