•Members of the Nigeria Police Force
Police authorities have expressed readiness for the Ekiti governorship election billed for today.
The Police Commissioner in Charge of Election Security, Abayomi Shogunle, said this last night when he appeared on Channels Television.
When asked how ready they are for the election, Shogunle said, “Well, I think from the explanation, from the layout of what we have put in place, at the end of the day, you’re going to agree with me that we are absolutely ready and we are good to go. “And if you want me to start laying that out now, I can.”
He explained that in terms of strategic planning, the police are ready for the poll, which will be held in 16 local government areas of the South West State.
“We are ready in terms of strategic planning. When we are having an election, an operation like this, you start with an operational order. The operational order, which has been approved for this election by the Inspector General of Police, IGP Olatunji Rilwan Disu, is anchored on the multi-layered security approach,” he said.
“Multi-layered security approach in the sense that we have designed all our deployments and all our activities around this security framework, which we have actually started implementing in the last one month through pre-election clearance operations, which we carried out at the bordering towns. You know, first we did a risk assessment, which now gave us a clear understanding of what the security situation in Ekiti is actually like.”
According to him, police authorities have massively deployed officers for the election, assuring residents that the exercise will be hitch-free. He, however, refused to disclose the number of officers for the exercise.
The Ekiti governorship election is coming four years after Biodun Oyebanji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won the 2022 polls.
This year, fourteen candidates are contesting the election with over one million voters registered in Ekiti.
