By Rosemary Ogbonnaya
The Election Security Support Centre (ESSC) of Center for Law Enforcement Education, CLEEN Foundation, in collaboration with the Police Service Commission,PSC, and People’s Gazette have monitored the conduct of security agencies deployed for the Anambra State Governorship election held on Saturday and other incidences during the election process, lamenting poorly remuneration of security welfare.
The Foundation disclosed this in the press statement signed by its Acting Executive Director, Ruth Olofin in Abuja at weekend.
Newsdiaryonline learnt that CLEEN ESSC tracked, documented, escalated and followed-up on security related developments across the state through twenty-one Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, accredited observers deployed across all the Local Government Areas,LGAs,in Anambra State. In addition, it deployed its mobile application called the CLEEN Mobile App which allows accredited observers to report security issues in their respective areas of observation.
The statement revealed that the security personnel deployed to the state especially the Nigeria Police Force were poorly remunerated, saying while police inspectors and Senior Police Officers were paid N67, 000 while the rank & file were paid N32,500 as allowance for policing the polls.
The Foundation also observed that a lot of policemen were found without hospitable accommodation, insisting that this portrays a wrong impression and brings to fore the issue of welfare package for police officers which has been a recurring challenge in previous elections.
Disclosing the adequacy of Security personnel at the Polling Units, CLEEN observed adequate security personnel at all polling units in the state. The minimum number of security officials seen in polling units was one while they also recorded up to sixteen security officials in polling units in some hotspot areas in the state.
The Foundation, however, observed 88.2% of the security personnel were wearing easily identifiable name tags. This is commendable. However, we observed that 11.8% were not wearing easily identifiable name tags.
While assuring that it will continue to observe the election and later issue post-election statement to detail more on the overall conduct of the security personnel deployed on election duty, CLEEN advised those that would engage in collation such as Independent National Electoral C commission, INEC,the Law Enforcement and Security agents to maintain the highest level of professionalism in their conduct by guiding against any form of compromise that could scuttle the democratic process.