A former spokesman for the Defence Headquarters, Major General John Enenche (rtd.) has stressed that security must be strengthened at collation centres nationwide to forestall more cases of snatching of ballot boxes and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines.
Citing cases of political thuggery and disruption of polls recorded during the presidential and National Assembly polls on Saturday in Lagos, Rivers S, and other places, the retired General said that security should be strengthened at the collation centres.
“It is not good to take chances”, he said on The 2023 Verdict, a Channels Television’s special election programme. “It is good to strengthen the state of readiness, the state of alert. If the military was on blue, changed them to yellow or red, the same thing with the police”.
Enenche, who is a staunch supporter of Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, said it is important for security to be strengthened at collation centres so that “the results that will be announced, to a large extent, will be believed by Nigerians”.
He noted that the election has not been militarised as claimed by senior lawyers like Mr Femi Falana, adding that Nigeria has not gotten to the stage where only the police will be involved in ensuring the sanity and safety of the voting process.
Enenche said: “What we are doing is not militarised. We are still growing.
“Look at the system of voting now. Before now, all manners of uncivilised things happen but now we are growing gradually and I believe that we will get to a point where only policemen and civil defence officers can provide security for the election, maybe in the next 10 years.
“But we cannot say it is militarised now, where people snatch ballot boxes. I assume if you take chances, even at the International Conference Centre, these bad boys can organise themselves and burst in against what is on ground.
“Anybody who is fair to himself will not say that we are militarising the electioneering process based on our level of development in all ramifications”.
