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 w...
The Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Rilwan Disu, has directed Commissioners of Police across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory to treat cases of jungle justice as homicide and ensure the arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of mob action. IGP Disu gave the directive while speaking on a live television programme on African Independent Television on Wednesday, August 12, 2026. He said mob action and jungle justice violated victims’ rights to life, dignity and fair hearing, stressing that such acts had no place in a country governed by the rule of law. The IGP described jungle justice as murder, insisting that it was not justice but a criminal act that violated the fundamental rights of victims. He said, “Let me state clearly, without ambiguity: jungle justice is murder. It is not justice. It is a crime, and the Nigeria Police Force will treat it as such. It is illegal. Full stop. “Nigeria operates under the rule of law, not mob rule. No citizen, co...