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From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
Ahead of the 2023 general elections which many have predicted to be extremely turbulent, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) says that it has devised a new strategy to tackle flare-ups, particularly in the South East.
Speaking at a workshop organised by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, in Abuja, to unveil the new strategy, the Controller General (CG) of NSCDC, Dr Ahmed Abubakar Audi, stated that despite the recorded incidences of attacks on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), NSCDC has vested in and will continuously provide an enabling environment to officers and men in order for the optimal discharge of corps’ mandates in this regard, most especially in the protection of critical national assets and infrastructure and other emanating security disturbances that arise from the election cycle phases.
The CG noted that earlier, foreign diplomats raised criticisms towards the successful conduct of the 2023 polls due to security concerns resulting from attacks on INEC facilities in some parts of the country.
“With less than five weeks to the general elections, the corps will release very soon, a revised standard operational guidelines on election duties, and other salient election security rules for personnel, which is aimed at ensuring safe and secured electoral processes nationwide.
“In addition to physical security, this strategic management workshop will also develop common policy guidelines that can be used in deepening the capacity of corps personnel, assist officers and men to comply with global standards of election security management.
“Already, the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES), has produced a revised code of conduct and rules of engagement for security personnel on electoral duty. It is expedient that we become conversant with this updated document as strategic commanders and relate the knowledge to our respective subordinates” he said.
In his remarks, the resident representative of Konrad Adenauer to Nigeria, Marija Peran, said that the growing insecurity in Nigeria will surely undermine the results of the 2023 elections. He said the scale of insecurity has reached a degree that threatens the very fabric of Nigerian society.
“The importance of having a secured environment for elections in Nigeria is not new because security threats can affect an election’s conduct and outcomes. For example, before the 2015 general elections, Nigeria’s service chiefs asked for a two-week extension to push Boko Haram insurgents and probably neutralise their threats to the polls” he said.
According to him, in 2015, it was only Boko Haram but today the criminal landscape has widened and evolved into new ones like banditry, kidnapping, more complex and intertwined terrorism, separatist agitations, secession threats and farmer-herder conflicts— all of them have even gotten partly intertwined.
These, he said, have implications for fear, displacement, trust, enfranchisement and disenfranchisement in the country in general and specifically when it comes to holding a huge logistical task like the general elections.
