Nigeria Content Online

The Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC)
has announced that it was considering enlisting the support of the
military in the provision of logistics for the conduct of 2011 general
elections.

This was contained in a communiqué issued at the end
of a two-day workshop on “Security Challenges of Election Management:
Toward Nigeria’s 2011” organised by INEC in collaboration with
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Foundation.

It said “the decision became necessary having noted
that the challenges facing INEC are multi-dimensional and the need to
garner support for tactical internal security awareness.” According to
the communiqué, INEC needs to develop a special electoral security
strategy and plans that will delineate roles for different agencies
based on their competence profile and capacity. The Chairman, Board of
INEC Electoral Institute Lai Olurode, in his presentation at the
workshop stressed that the need to enlist the military for logistics
was necessary to overcome the challenges in difficult terrains.

“In the distribution of materials there are some
difficult terrains that you cannot navigate ordinarily unless you get
some logistics support from security agencies,” Mr Olurode noted. He
said that INEC was discussing with security operatives to see how best
to collaborate with them in the distribution of election materials in
river sides and difficult areas. He said that kidnapping and abduction
would not necessarily pose a threat to the military engaged in the
distribution of materials in such areas.

He said that participants at the workshop had
observed that security remained a persistent critical challenge to the
conduct of elections in Nigeria. “It was recommended for INEC to
create a platform for inter-agency collaboration on security matters at
all levels as a matter of urgency. INEC should also design and deploy
appropriate training and sensitisation measures to guide security
personnel and agencies to be deployed for electoral duties,” Mr
Olurode added. The workshop drew some 50 participants from the academia,

security services, civil society organisations, the media, private
security firms and electoral management bodies from Lesotho, Kenya,
Togo and Senegal.</