By Agency Report
Nigeria Police Force, has said politicians as well as secessionists are behind the current attacks on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) offices across the south east and south west states in the country.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba Alkali attributed the attacks to some politicians and secessionist groups in the South East and South West region.
IGP spoke at the commencement of an investigative hearing of the House Ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives probing the attacks on offices and the facilities of INEC on Friday in Abuja.
Represented by the DIG in charge of Department of Operations, Dandaura Mustapha, the IGP said, “The Nigeria police being the lead agency in internal security and elections generally is always at the receiving end. Whatever happens — it is duty of the police to protect here and there.
“When INEC finally lifted on campaigns — the campaigns commenced and what we realized initially was inter and intra-party dispute. We realized that members of political parties were destroying billboards, posters, destruction of campaign offices in some part of the states. This we quickly alerted the commissioner of police in charge of the commands and gave them clear directive that it is the right of every political party to go to all the nooks and crannies of the society and campaign.
“It is a constitutional right so on account does a state governor or any state actor to prevent political parties from moving about to do their campaigns. We now come to the immediate attack on INEC facilities. Of recent, the ones that took place in Osun and Ogun, then last week in Ebonyi, Imo and Enugu.
“What we discovered is that — we all know in this country, it is a well know fact that in the south-east geo-political zone we have issues of secessionists — the IPOB and ESN. These groups are bent on stopping elections from taking place in the south-east.
“They have been attacking our personnel, they have been killing our personnel. They have have been retrieving arms from members of the security agencies, not only the police — the military and other paramilitary organisations that are there.
“They have been doing it, especially now that the embargo on campaigns have been lifted. The election is approaching very fast and they are putting much pressure to see that this election do not hold in the south-east political zone.”
(Vanguard)
