CLEEN foundation urged timely deployment of materials, personnel for polls

The CLEEN Foundation has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure the timely deployment of personnel and elections materials as part of measures to ensure free, credible and fair General Elections.

The Executive Director of the foundation, Dr. Benson Olugbuo, who made the call on Friday in Abuja at the ‘Dissemination of Research Findings from Security Threat Assessment towards the 2019 General Elections’, said that majority of Nigerians expect the forthcoming elections to be peaceful and credible.

According to him, INEC should also ensure impartiality and incorruptibility of their regular and ad hoc staff.

He said the foundation conducted a nation-wide Election Security Threat Assessment (ESTA) as part of the Election Security Management Project (ESMP) and that earlier assessments were conducted in April and October of 2018 in 36 states and the FCT in October 2018, by a team of enumerators.

According to some of the key findings of the survey, 74 percent of Nigerians administered as respondent expect the elections to be peaceful.

“Nigerians perceive that the role of non-state armed groups such as vigilantes, insurgents, cult-groups, militants and party thugs will likely increase before, during and after the elections. Nigerians identified the behaviour of politicians in undermining the democratic process. Examples include Godfatherism, lack of internal party democracy, party thugs, vote trading.

“Hate Speech and misinformation by media remains a critical factor and potential threat to the elections as identified by citizens. The survey notes that the wide spread availability of hard drugs and substances poses a threat to the electoral process,” the survey said.

While majority of respondents noted that partiality and corruption of INEC, security agencies and the Judiciary may likely trigger electoral violence; they also said the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in several states in Nigeria was seen as risk factor before, during and after the elections.

Respondents said that the marginalization of vulnerable groups including youths, women and people living with disabilities is seen as a risk factor during the election; and also that excessive use of force and inadequate and ineffective deployment of security agents before, during and after the elections could cause electoral violence.

They therefore called for strict adherence to the provisions of the various laws guiding the conduct of the election to ensure its success and credibility.