By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

The role of security men in the forthcoming election has become an issue. Ordinarily in advanced democracies, security men are rarely seen within the precincts of the voting area and certainly do not enforce a lockdown of the town as would be expected across the country.

However, the role of security men became an issue after the elections in Ekiti State where the All Progressives Congress, APC has alleged that security men were used to reining in their officials while at the same time giving leeway to their rivals, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. It is as such not surprising that the APC has been at the forefront of pushing for the exclusion of security men from the electoral process.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has, however, restated the need for security men to provide cover for its officials and also to provide the enabling environment for the process from voting to collation.

However, at the polling station, even if the governor is there, INEC would recognise the presiding officer of the station as the chief security officer. All security men deployed to the polling unit would be answerable to him or her.

The security agents would:

• Provide security at the polling station to ensure that accreditation, counting and collation of results are done smoothly.
• Ensure the maintenance of peace in the polling area.
• Protect electoral officers at all levels of the voting process.
• Arrest at the instruction of the presiding officer any one accused of impeding the peaceable conduct of the election or who the presiding officer reports as violating the electoral laws.
• Accompany the presiding officer, collation officer or returning officer in the discharge of their duties.

Tomorrow: How you can move from polling station to police station and prison.