By Lanre Olagunju
Nigeria has a peculiar relationship with election security. We ask the police to keep politicians from fighting, then spend the election complaining about which side the police are fighting for.
That contradiction will be tested again on Saturday in Osun.
The question is not whether the Nigeria Police Force can deploy enough men and women to the state. It is whether, after the votes are counted, both sides can honestly say the police behaved like a referee rather than a participant.
That is a much harder test.
IGP Olatunji Disu appears to understand that the real work began long before election day. On 3 July, he went to Osun against the backdrop of escalating political violence, meeting Governor Ademola Adeleke and subsequently engaging political parties, traditional rulers, leadership from the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) – whose influence extends to a constituency often at the centre of political mobilisation – and other stakeholders. He warned that the state was preparing for an election, not a war.
There is something important about that approach. Election policing should not begin when voters start queuing. By then, intelligence should already have identified flashpoints, political actors should have been warned, and the police should know who is likely to test the limits.
Disu’s engagement with young people is particularly significant in a state where political violence often recruits the young as foot soldiers. Listening to those who live closest to the problem is not weakness. It is intelligence gathering of a different kind.
But the IGP’s visit also produced an uncomfortable moment.
Disu told the governor that he had been briefed about wanted criminal suspects allegedly being shielded by influential people and spoke of criminals allegedly hiding in the Government House.
Some found the statement awkward. Perhaps it was. But there is a bigger question worth asking: what does speaking truth to power look like if the police chief cannot say what his intelligence is telling him, simply because the alleged hideout happens to be politically inconvenient?
The answer, however, must also include evidence, due process and accountability. Intelligence is not conviction.
Perhaps more revealing was what happened to the state’s election command structure.
With some political actors questioning the neutrality of the existing Commissioner of Police, the Force introduced an Electoral Commissioner of Police ahead of the poll. That decision can be interpreted in two ways. Critics may see it as an admission that confidence had already collapsed. Another interpretation is that the police leadership recognised that perception of neutrality is itself a security issue and acted long before election day.
That distinction matters.
The Force has also moved senior officers into the operation, including DIG, AIG and DCP-level coordination. The value of such deployment should not be measured by the number of stars on shoulders but by whether decisions can be made quickly, consistently and without political interference.
There is another test.
When Senator Francis Fadahunsi, an APC member, made remarks interpreted as a threat to “kill” Accord Party members, the Police invited him for questioning within 24 hours. He later said he meant “killing votes”, not people.
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The bigger point is this: political affiliation did not shield him from scrutiny. That is how police neutrality should work: the same standard for everyone, regardless of party, position or personality.
That is where credibility is earned.
For neutrality to mean anything, it must be consistent. The same standard must apply to the opposition, the ruling party, the powerful and the politically connected. Where the facts demand scrutiny, no political affiliation should confer immunity.
Osun will therefore be a test not just of security, but of institutional character.
Were voters protected regardless of who they supported? Were parties treated equally? Were violent actors pursued regardless of political affiliation? Did police officers themselves remain restrained and professional? And when the result is announced, can the losing side say, even grudgingly, that the police seem to have carried out their job fairly?
Those questions will matter more than any promise of neutrality.
Disu has spent the weeks before the election putting structures, personnel and principles in place. The harder task now is to ensure that those principles survive the pressure of election day.
The Police do not need to determine who wins Osun. Its responsibility is simpler, and perhaps more difficult: to create the conditions in which whoever wins can credibly be said to have won the voters, not the Police.
That is what neutrality looks like when it matters.
Lanre Olagunju wrote in from Abuja.