Jonathan Faults Use Of Military For Elections

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has advocated for Police-led security during elections across the country, noting that the deployment of military personnel for election duties in Nigeria is out of place.

He stated this at the public presentation of some publications by a former inspector-general of police, Solomon Arase, in Abuja on Tuesday.

The publications entitled, “Readings on Election Security Management” and “Selected Readings on Internal Security Management”, will provide invaluable insights and perspectives on the critical issues of election security and internal security in Nigeria.

Jonathan stated that elections should be primarily managed by the police and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), noting that deployment of military personnel overstretched the military.

According to him, in most other countries, the Air Force and Army are used to transport election materials to dangerous areas, and not providing security at polling units as done in the country.

According to him, “Having been the president of this country before, when you talk about internal security, it’s an area that touches my heart. And especially when you talk about election security, again, it’s an area that touches my heart. One gets worried when it comes to Nigerian elections.

“In fact, here we overstretch the Army. In most other countries, the military doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day management of elections.

“Some countries use them to manage strategic systems, such as transporting election materials to dangerous areas. But manning polling booths and staying around polling stations—military personnel are never used for such duties.”

Also speaking, the author of the publications, Dr. Solomon Arase called for better equipment of the police in order to carry out their duties better during and after the elections.

According to him, “It could be safely affirmed that beyond the critical driving role of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the quality of the legal framework governing the democratic process and the conducts of political actors, the professional output of the Police and the extended policing family within the democratic space remains a fundamental variable in our democratic journey.

“The import of this assumption is that for our democracy to thrive, the security governance element must be effective.

This requires that the Police and other complementary security agencies must be mentally mobile to act with knowledge of not just the laws of democracy, but to have the critical thinking and intellectual robustness needed to guarantee that that they understand well enough the democratic space they police, the peculiar threats that could stress the process and law enforcement conducts that could call the credibility of the process to question. It also entails that they acquire strong and informed operational capacity that will position the institutions to aid other critical actors towards strengthening our democratic culture.

“These publications sets out to address these critical issues by critically interrogating the complex dynamics of democratic security governance in Nigeria. The objects are twofold. First is to open-up the intellectual space in relation to the intellectual, legal and professional inputs into the field of democratic policing; second is to equip Police, the wider law enforcement community, the political class and other strategic actors in our democratic space with the requisite knowledge that will not only engender quality election security outcome, but act as a framework to hold law enforcement operatives accountable in the discharge of their electoral security mandate.”