The Nigeria police has said that it will deploy over 1,000 personnel for the supplementary election in Anambra State billed to hold in Ihiala Local Government Area from 10am to 4pm on Tuesday.
This was revealed by the State Commissioner of Police, Echeng Echeng.
Collation of results were suspended by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) after elections did not hold in Ihiala on Saturday.
According to Echeng, all hands are on deck to ensure that the election is peaceful and successful.
“We are deploying more than a thousand to the polling booths. This makes an average of 3, 4, they are going to be complemented by other security agencies,” the commissioner said.
“All the tactical teams, Police Mobile Force (PMF) teams, we have pushed enough into Ihiala because we want to make sure that at every point that we anticipate a problem, we dominate the area. For whoever wants to come out tomorrow will have his own story to tell.”
The commissioner added that to avoid any problem during the election, there would be curfew across Ihiala Local Government from11:55 pm on Monday which will end at 11:55 pm on Tuesday.
He said, “The firm standard applies to Ihiala, we are going to shut down from 11:55 pm today and open up at 11:55 pm tomorrow.
“There were reasons why that shut down had to be. It had to take care of entry and exit points, people not being allowed to come in and cause any problem. So we are going to do what exactly we did with the whole state, this time around restricted to Ihiala alone.”
Echeng refuted claims that inadequate security prevented INEC officials from conducting polls in Ihiala.
While insisting that there was enough presence of security officials in the local council, Echeng noted that additional operatives have already been deployed to the affected local government.
“INEC should answer that question, not the police. I still say emphatically that we are on the ground with other security agencies and as far as we are concerned, elections were supposed to be (held) there. So if INEC said there was a threat, they should answer that question,” he said.
