SSS Stop Using Masked Men for Election –INEC's Jega Warns

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said on Wednesday that the commission would not allow security operatives to be masked during the 2015 general elections.

Jega said this in Abuja during an interactive session with both local and international civil society organisations who are involved in monitoring elections in Nigeria.

In the words of Jega: “In recent times, we have witnessed an increased presence of hooded security operatives during elections. This is an emerging trend which is highly worrisome and which needs to be addressed in good time. 

“Security agents who are deployed on election duties should not be masked, the doctrine of transparency requires that they should be identifiable. 

“We will not allow such persons during the 2015 elections. Any security personnel deployed for the election must be someone identifiable such that if anything happens we will be able to know who to hold responsible."

Jega had on Tuesday, during the public hearing organised by House of Reps on the bill for the amendment of the Electoral Act, 2010, backed a proposed amendment that would confer the exclusive power to manage and assign security men during elections on INEC.

The bill also sought to limit the role of the military during elections.

Jega told the CSO representatives that the emerging trend of security operatives wearing mask during elections is very wrong. He also decried the over-zealousness of some security agents during the August 9 governorship election in Osun state, who were just arrested people anyhow.

He disclosed that security operatives arrested some members of staff of the commission and nine youth corps members, engaged as INEC ad-hoc staff, and kept them in detention for over 12 hours.

He said that they were arrested around 9pm on the eve of the election while on their way to the Registration Area Centers, RACs, which was legitimately provided for them by INEC.

“They were not released until about 6am the next day, a situation that almost disrupted the distribution of electoral materials in some areas.

“It was sheer luck that we still managed to open the polling units early, otherwise, there would have been disaster. We took a serious view of that and reported the matter to all the appropriate authorities because at a point we became worried that some persons wanted to undermine our effort.”