400,000 Security Men deployed For General Elections–IGP
The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Alkali Baba Usman, said over 400,000 security personnel have been deployed for the smooth conduct of the general elections across the country. The elections hold February 25 and two weeks after.
The IGP made the disclosure yesterday at the 66th Ministerial Media Briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday.
He said out of this number, the police would provide over 300,000 personnel, while the rest would be sourced from complementary security agencies in the country.
While listing fuel scarcity and cash crunch as threats against the conduct of the elections, Baba assured that the situation will stabilise before the commencement of the exercise.
“We are very sure the situation of cash and petrol will stabilise before the conduct of the election,” he stated.
He further informed that an intelligence unit has been put in place to track and apprehend those who may engage in vote buying and those who may want to 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, 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 Nigerian 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, totaling 404,106 to police the elections.”
