Usman Alkali, the Inspector General of Police, has announced that 310,973 police personnel, including conventional police officers, mobile police officers, a special counter-terrorism unit, Special forces, an intelligence response team, and other sections of the police, will be deployed to ensure the smooth conduct of the elections, with an additional 93,495 personnel from other security agencies.
He disclosed this during the weekly ministerial briefing at the state house.
Listing threats against the conduct of the elections to include fuel scarcity and cash squeeze, the Police Chief expressed the believe that the situation will stabilize before the commencement of the upcoming exercise.
According to him, the police have upscaled their activities to tackle other existing crimes and threats to disrupt 2023 elections like terrorism and banditry, secessionist campaign by IPOB and what he terms as ‘growing and misguided activities of the Oduduwa nation agitators’ who are also attempting to dis stabilize the situation, cyber crimes etc.
The IGP equally asserted that an intelligence unit is in place to track and apprehend those who will engage in vote buying.