Abdulsalami Committee Wants INEC To Control Police During Elections

The National Peace Committee has recommended that operatives that will be deployed by the Nigeria Police Force during elections should be at the command of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

The committee stated that INEC is the agency empowered by law to conduct elections, not security authorities.

The committee is a non-governmental initiative created in 2014 due to threats associated with the 2015 general elections and it is chaired by former head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar.

The report tagged ‘Beyond the optics: Understanding the National Peace Committee Interventions in the 2019 general elections”, revealed how it has done its part to resolve political crisis from 2019 to 2021 including elections in states.

It stated that while security operatives are to provide security throughout the elections, some have become compromised and are part of the problem.

It added that while the police should be empowered, trained and instructed on global best practices on forth coming elections, the NPF leadership should place them at the command of INEC.

“There is need to overhaul security deployment during elections starting with taking military off election duties. Going forward, all police and other non-military agencies to deployed for election duty should be placed under the command of INEC who should in turn train them for the tasks expected of them,” the report stated.

It also recommended the decentralization of INEC so it could perform better.

“INEC needs to be broken down into disparate but complementary sub units that will handle different aspects of its core mandate. By decentralizing responsibilities, the agency can become more effective,” it added.

The committee also advised INEC to establish strict criteria for setting up new parties to check the abuse of privilege leading to the floating of several parties that are not viable by any standard.