The police and security of electoral process

The news therefore that the Nigeria Police Force is training some 160,000 officers to provide security during polling in Nigeria is therefore a welcome development.According to the Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar, the training is intended to boost the police personnel on electoral laws, election security, crowd control skills, anti-riot operations, covert intelligence […]

The news therefore that the Nigeria Police Force is training some 160,000 officers to provide security during polling in Nigeria is therefore a welcome development.
According to the Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar, the training is intended to boost the police personnel on electoral laws, election security, crowd control skills, anti-riot operations, covert intelligence operations and ‘general principles of democratic policing’.
These are areas of expertise that the police surely need to possess in order to fit into the culture of democratic practice that the country has been trying to consolidate, albeit in fits and starts in the last fifteen years.
The Inspector General said that the new operational procedure that the trainees would have imbibed would be put to practice in the forthcoming gubernatorial elections in Ekiti State in June and Osun State in August this year.
Abubakar made these disclosures at a meeting with the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr James Entwistle, who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
The police chief was so confident of the effectiveness of the training that he even offered a guarantee that both polls in Ekiti and Osun states would be hitch-free.
Training is no doubt useful; but Nigerians’ concern over the conduct of the police during elections cannot be assuaged with words alone, even if these came from the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. By itself, training alone may not be sufficient to overcome the egregious involvement of police personnel in the perpetration and perpetuation of electoral malpractices of the past.
As the problem with the general recruitment pattern of the police has shown, enlisting in the Force for many is anything but normal police duty. Some enlistees have questionable backgrounds; criminals and murderers have been discovered among them years after they wear the uniform.
Proper background checks of enlistees in the new unit are therefore crucial in determining the quality of the product of the training.
It is well documented that police officers posted to election duty are routinely compromised to either look the other way or be actively involved in subverting the electoral process.
There are reports of police personnel being involved ballot snatching and covering up for perpetrators of many other electoral offences.
They are also known to be willing tools in the hands of ruling parties to deny aggrieved opposition members avenues to mount any legal challenge to disputed electoral outcomes.
 As a matter of their training and call of duty, the police should not only be non-partisan, but must be seen by all parties to be so.
The police should handle cases involving officials in government as impartially as they would those involving the opposition.
One of the roots of electoral violence is the perception of stolen votes among the electorates. Such perception has in some cases been traced to a combination of factors, which include the conduct of security personnel who collaborate with politicians to commit the fraud.
In Nigeria, the incidence of electoral violence is almost endemic. Although most of this is due to the activities of politicians involved in the electoral process, when they will not accept defeat even if the results underline that fact, the security officials, particularly the police, deployed to election duty can help minimise violence if they maintain absolute neutrality, which their calling in fact demands.
The Inspector General should ensure that the training manual for the police, not only for officers engaged in election duty, but all the nation’s police personnel as well, must include the requirement to be impartial at all times.