The Minister of Defence, Gen. Christopher Musa (retd.), has warned security agencies against relying on last-minute deployments for election security.
According to him, securing elections cannot be achieved through last-minute security deployments, insisting that lasting election security requires months of intelligence-led planning and coordination.
Musa stated this on Tuesday while delivering the keynote address at the Blueprint newspaper seminar on security.
The minister said election security must not be treated as an event limited to election day but as a continuous process requiring early preparation and assessment of emerging threats.
“The lesson is clear: successful election security is not achieved through last-minute deployments. It is achieved through months of planning, intelligence-led operations, inter-agency coordination, effective communication and continuous assessment of emerging threats and, above all, through the confidence that citizens place in the institutions established to serve them.
“Security should never be viewed as an event. It is a process that begins long before campaigns commence and continues long after the final vote has been counted,” he said.
He said the changing nature of security threats had made it necessary for election preparations to go beyond the physical protection of polling units.
According to him, threats to elections could emerge through cyberspace, misinformation, economic hardship, and the manipulation of ethnic and religious divisions.
He warned that the greatest threat to the integrity of an election might no longer be a person carrying a weapon at a polling unit but an anonymous actor operating online to manipulate information and undermine public confidence.
The minister also proposed a six-pillar framework for strengthening election security.
He said, “The first pillar: Strategic Intelligence should form the foundation of election security planning.
“Modern election security must be intelligence-led rather than incident-driven, with threat assessments, early warning systems and real-time information sharing among security, intelligence and electoral institutions.
“On the second pillar: As elections become increasingly technology-enabled, protecting digital infrastructure is no longer optional, and electoral systems, communication networks, and information platforms must be safeguarded against cyber intrusion, digital sabotage, and malicious interference,” he said.
Musa listed civil-military coordination as the third pillar, stressing the need for collaboration among security agencies without institutional rivalry.
