Fireworks

Pandemonium broke out at the Rumuwoji Playground in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital on 19 January after a twin explosion rocked the…

Pandemonium broke out at the Rumuwoji Playground in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital on 19 January after a twin explosion rocked the campaign rally of the All Progressives Congress, leaving at least three persons seriously injured. The Punch reported that the APC governorship candidate Tonye Cole and other candidates were present at the rally when the blast occurred. A similar event held by the Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State ended in disarray after unknown men fired gunshots at the campaign ground in Ward 7 of the Edo Central Local Government Area. The police have launched investigations into both incidents.

The 2023 election and its lead-up is a departure from previous electoral seasons because security before the polls make up the most pressing issues. In the past, discussions on electoral security heavily focused on the security and safety of INEC staff, voters and voting materials on election day despite pockets of violence that followed the campaign season. This time, however, the heightened insecurity in the country has put the safety of INEC, the electorate, political actors and members of their patronage networks on mounting concerns. The resultant ripple effect is that it creates a demand for the business of private security in terms of the purchase of bulletproof cars. Not only that, it over-burdens the system, especially when one considers that a sizable number of the casualties are police officers who are on VIP protection duties. Often, when these attacks occur, police officers are used as cannon fodder as they are not found in the bulletproof cars of their principals and are thus easy targets, which ultimately is a misappropriation of the much-needed but scarcely available security manpower. Among the two places where last week’s political violence took place, Rivers tops with the most concern. Rivers State has consistently encountered electoral violence since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, even as a one-party state, and it appears this is not abating. It has a history of pre-election violence that is a spin-off of school and street gang rivalry that is part of the larger ecosystem of Niger Delta militancy. In a May 2020 report, SBM examined the state’s key drivers of gang violence with their ties to political parties and actors. This has not changed. Rather, the violence deployment pattern has now evolved to using explosives in an arena that used to tout its gun supremacy. Since 2020, there have been about 17 incidents of unclaimed bomb explosions across the country. Rivers lead the country with at least five; only Imo and Kaduna come close with three each. The last time a bomb went off in the state was in May 2021, when six people got injured in a dynamite explosion in the Mile 3 area of Port Harcourt. While Edo is yet to experience those levels of political violence, bar claims from the Islamic State West Africa Province that it killed some policemen and destroyed their vehicles with explosives in Igarra in September 2022, the state is not faring any better on matters of security. Edo and Rivers have a long history of gang violence from youths that act as mercenaries for political ends, but with the elections imminent, the dynamic may have changed to something more sinister: more actors would be looking to bring bombs to a gunfight.