Guber Election: Security Forces Focus On Kano, Rivers, Lagos

The governorship and state assembly election to be conducted on Saturday may be one of the most watched elections ever conducted in the country.

Tension is already building up in Lagos, Rivers and Kano States ahead of the election and the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) which include the military, Department of State Services, Nigerian Police Force and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, is said to be focusing on the three states to avoid any breakdown of law and order.

Other security agencies include the  Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), among others.

The election will be conducted in 28 out of the 36 states in the country.

Security Deployments

The police and the DSS have made huge personnel and logistics deployments to the affected states in the last 24 hours.

The DSS had disclosed that it deployed a crack team of detectives to track political actors and individuals making inciteful statements capable of threatening peace during the election.

The police equally announced that it had deployed adequate operational assets and operatives to states where elections are scheduled to hold.

It also restricted movement on the election for all except officials of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), accredited media houses, and observers among others.

VIPs were also banned from being escorted by any security operatives.

The police also said all the security agencies deployed to polling units across the country are working together to maintain law and order during the exercise.

“Generally, all security agencies are working together, so Nigerians should not expect the police alone to race down to any scene.

“The military, NSCDC and others, as long as they are members of the ICCES, are duty-bound to respond to calls. It is a collective responsibility to make sure we nip any incidence in the bud,” the Force Spokesperson, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, said on Friday while on a Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily.

Tension In Lagos, Kano, Rivers

In Kano, tension is building between supporters of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and those of the All Progressives Congress (APC) over the election. Kano has a huge population said to be about 6.5 million people, which party would are likely to lock and going by the result of the presidential election of February 25, the two parties would be running neck to neck on Saturday.

In Rivers, the coalition of opposition parties led by the APC is suspected to evenly match the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the state. Residents have largely berated the outcome of the presidential elections where the outgoing governor, Nyesome Wike, was accused of rigging the election to favour the APC.

Also, the recent spate of the kidnapping of some house of assembly aspirants in the state has caused panic in the affected communities where they represent. Less than 24 hours to the election, Chukwu Ogbonna, Accord Party’s candidate for the state’s house of assembly representing Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Constituency 2, who was kidnapped on March 14, is yet to be released by his captors.

Similarly, Lagos is boiling over the governorship contest which is going to be a straight fight between the ruling APC and the opposition Labour Party.

Most residents see the election as a contest between continuity and the quest for change.

There have been reports of intimidation of voters by some political actors in the state as well as videos of some residents making inciteful statements, widely believed by civil society groups to incite voters’ apathy during the election.

Reports of attacks by political thugs in the past weeks have led to 70 civil society groups calling on security operatives to deploy adequate personnel to these states.

Security Analyst Reacts

Kabir Adamu, a security expert and owner of Beacon Consulting explained to THE WHISTLER why Lagos, Kano and Rivers States are getting more attention from the security agencies.

He said, “The willingness of politicians to include non-state armed groups into the security architecture to protect themselves while using them as an influence point against their opponent, either to suppress their participation in the political process or their engagement in political activities.

“Also, the failure of security agencies to prevent either the politicians from using these none state armed groups by not arresting and penalizing both sides.

“Then there are other factors that are not necessarily security related:  the benefits of participating in political activities and processes in some of the states like Rivers and Lagos because of its wealth and Kano because of its size is increasing the intensity of the competition”.

He added that the proliferation of small arms and light weapons are also factors that have allowed the security challenges in the country to thrive.