According to Inspector General of Police (IGP) Alkali Baba Usman, about 400,000 security personnel will be deployed to ensure a peaceful election process across the country in the upcoming 2023 election.
The announcement was made by the IGP yesterday at the Presidential Palace in Abuja during the 66th Ministerial Media Press Conference, organized by the Presidential Communications Team.
Of that total, he announced the police would provide more than 300,000 people, with the rest coming from other security organizations across the country.
While considering fuel shortages and cash shortages as threats to conducting the election, Baba assured that the situation would stabilize before the start of the exercise.
“We are very sure the situation of cash and petrol will stabilize before the conduct of the election,” he stated.
According to the reports obtained, he added that an intelligence unit had been set up to track and arrest those who could buy votes and who would disrupt the exercise.
He said:-
“In aid of our efficient and informed human operational and logistics deployment plan, we have undertaken an election security threat analysis, which identifies and prioritised possible threats to the electoral process, in terms of location and specific personalities and groups across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“The force is also leveraging on the outcome of similar exercises undertaken and shared with us by the Department of State Services and civil society organisations, particularly CLEEN Foundation. The operational plan of the Force is a product of these initiatives.
“From INEC records, there exists 176,846 polling units in 8,809 wards of the 36 states of the federation and FCT, where the elections will be conducted. The Nigeria Police, with the support of other security agencies, has perfected plans to deploy, in a coordinated and collaborative manner, to cover all these locations.
“The deployment will cover the National Collation Centre in Abuja, as well as other collation centres across states of the federation, the FCT and the 774 local areas of the federation. In view of the above, Nigeria police will deploy 310,973 personnel for the elections security operations.
This will comprise the conventional policemen, the mobile policemen, the special counterterrorism unit, the special forces, the intelligence response team, and other sections of the police.
“The manpower requirement for this exercise will be complemented by the military and other security agencies. In this regard, aside from the military and the DSS, other security agencies will contribute a total of 93,495 personnel for the election security operations.
“These include the Nigrian Security and Civil Defence, who will deploy, through the police, 151,000 personnel; the Federal Road Safety Corps, 21,000; Nigerian Correctional Service, 11,336; the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, 9,447; Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, 350, totalling 404,106 to police the elections.
“With this layout, a minimum of, at least, two personnel, drawn from the above agencies, will be jointly deployed to man each of the polling units across the country, while the armed personnel will secure the public space, INEC facilities, vulnerable locations, border areas, as well as undertake armed escort duties for INEC personnel, materials and local and international observers.
“We, also, expect the military to complement this situation by providing armed protection to critical national assets, ensuring that the enforcement of movements are curtailed through the blocking of exit points and entry points to various states, local governments and so forth.”
Regarding specific plans to arrest people who could disrupt the exercise as well as prevent people from buying votes, Baba revealed that unique technical intelligence assets and a police intelligence unit in particular, working with other security agencies and INEC, is ready to track down and arrest those who may be planning to disrupt the exercise or intimidate the vote-buyers.
He said:-
“As part of efforts to address the menace of votes selling and buying, a special intelligence unit of the force has been constituted to clandestinely monitor the trend and work with EFCC, ICPC and INEC in identifying the network that may be involved in this illegality and apprehend them where possible.
“In addition, the unique technical intelligence assets of the force are also being deployed towards identifying adverse elements that may be planning to disrupt the process.
“Through this initiative, such elements will be identified real time, geo-located, isolated, arrested and brought to justice.”
