The Police Administration says officers who are found to have behaved unprofessionally during the Special Voting exercise will be sanctioned.
Director of Police Operations, Dr Benjamin Agordzo, said officers who could not find their names to cast their ballot cannot vent their frustrations in any way they deem fit. They are bound to be professional at all times, he said.
Some angry and disappointed security personnel vowed to abandon post on the day of the general elections if they were denied the opportunity to vote in the Special Voting exercise.
Some complained to the media after they found that they could not vote because their names were not found in the Special Voter’s list.
But speaking on Joy FM/MultiTV’s news analysis programme, Newsfile Saturday, Chief Superintendent Dr Agordzo said the conduct and utterances of the security personnel were unprofessional and needless.
He explained the police boss, John Kudalor could not locate his name either in the Voter’s list but chose to remain calm because of the need not to compromise the security of the country.
“You belong to a professional organisation [and] you have sworn an oath to behave in a certain way [so] you don’t go about misbehaving,” he said.
Chief Superintendent Dr Agordzo said the actions of the officers amount to a misconduct, acts he said are punishable by the establishing documents of the Service.
He said the police list was sent to the Electoral Commission (EC) ahead of the Thursday’s exercise, adding the turn of events show something went wrong for reasons he does not know.
He appealed to officers who could not vote to exercise decorum as the police administration works on resolving the challenges.
A second window for security personnel who could not vote in Thursday’s exercise has been scheduled for Sunday, December 4 by the Commission.
The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has expressed its dissatisfaction with the organisation of Thursday’s exercise.
A member of CODEO Advisory Board, Sheikh Arimiyawo Shaibu said they received the news of missing names with some ambivalence because the political atmosphere is charged ahead of the polls.
“There is an electoral suspicion and you would expect the EC to put in place measures to reduce to the barest minimum challenges as faced during the exercise but it was not done,” he said.
Although CODEO commended the Commission for the swift manner it handled the issue, Sheikh Shaibu said more needs to be done so that the challenges would not play out in next week’s elections.
“The EC has to reduce the electoral suspicion to the barest minimum for what happened stoked the suspicion further,” he added.
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