By Adadareporters
Following a hitch-free conduct of the last Saturday’s local government elections in Rivers State, there have been calls for a law mandating the operatives of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps to solely monitor all elections in Nigeria.
Those interviewed accused the Nigeria Police and the military of being partisan and aiding malpractices during elections.
In view of the national auditor of the Peoples Democratic Party, Barr Ray Nnaji, “Let’s be using operatives of the NSCDC in subsequent elections instead of the police and the military. Police are no longer necessary in our elections. You can see, there was no violence in the Rivers elections. We didn’t hear that anybody was killed during the elections. There was no case of ballot box snatching.”
An author, Charles Obioma, alleged that police had been the tool for election rigging in Nigeria.
According to him, “It would be nice to phase the police out of the system. You never can tell if that would be the change we anticipate. It is only in Nigeria that reports and videos of police carrying ballot boxes are read, and nothing would happen. Some targeted opponents would be beaten up in the presence of the police, and nothing would happen. Let’s test the integrity of Civil Defence and know if they would toe the same line. But I commend the conduct of the LG polls in Rivers State. There was no tension. It means the tension at elections is created.”
Our correspondent reports that the outcome of the LG elections in Rivers State showed that the Peoples Party won 22 chairmanship seats while the Action Alliance won one. Gov Fubara, who is of the PDP, had allegedly given his tacit support for APP following the hijack of the state PDP structure by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike. The two are entangled in godfather-godson imbroglio.
The court had banned the Nigeria Police from providing security during the polls, leading to the strength of the Civil Defence to be tested.
