A Civil Society Organization known as the Citizens Stability Forum (CSF) has urged Nigeria’s security agencies to act on intelligence provided by the Department of State Services (DSS) in containing the security threats bedeviling the country.
The CSO in a statement signed by the lead convener of the organisation, Comrade Mukhtar Lawal, called for more synergy among the security agencies in the country, urging all the security agencies and the general public to collectively work together to stem the current insecurity situation in the country.
The organization lamented that the current insecurity happenings in Nigeria had exposed the lack of collaboration and synergy between security agencies in the country.
According to it, the most disturbing aspect being the continuous disregard for security intelligence provided by the Department of State Services (DSS) to the Military, Police and Paramilitary security agencies, something that in some countries can be treated as treasonable offence.
CSF noted that a lot of the success and ability of the DSS to meet up with its own security responsibility is down to the excellent leadership from the DSS hierarchy led by Director-General of the DSS, Mr. Yusuf Bichi.
The DG, the organization said has instilled commitment, diligence, and pro-activeness in tackling insecurity across the county.
It called on the federal, state and local governments to jointly provide enough and the latest security working equipment for effective services, and pleaded with security agencies to secure this country by working collectively.
The statement reads, “The Department of State Services (DSS) is one of the most important arms of Nigeria’s security setup saddled with critical functions of prevention and detection of any crime/terrorism against the internal security of Nigeria and provision of timely advice to Government on all matters of National security interest among others. This function has made the DSS the fulcrum of intelligence gathering and sharing among sister security agencies. As such when there is inefficiency in collaboration or a lack of synergy with other security agencies the result will be that criminals and terrorist will be having a field day and will be pulling up acts of terrorism that will otherwise be impossible for them.
“One may then question what is the problem? Why is the collaboration and co-operation between the security agencies this ineffective and who is at fault and responsible for this? To answer these questions, one needs to understand the role that each agency needs to play in this security co-operation. The roles are clearly defined by Nigeria’s constitution, that DSS are responsible for security (of all sort) intelligence gathering and sharing this intelligence with relevant sister agencies while the role the other agencies is to act on such intelligence. Based on all relevant evidence and happenings in the country, it is very clear that the DSS has been playing its role diligently and have been feeding the relevant agencies with intelligence before the occurrence on most of the unfortunate insecurity events that recently occurred.
“For example, before the Bombing, shooting and Kidnapping incident on the Abuja-Kaduna Train on the 28th of March 2022, the DSS issued a security alert about the suspicious movements and activities of terrorist elements in the vicinity of the rail lines between Rijana and Kateri to both the Military and police as well as the Nigerian Railway Corporation. Unfortunately, the disregard to such critical intelligence by relevant authorities led to the loss of lives of eight Nigerian citizens, forty-one (41) hospitalised and over sixty (60) civilians kidnapped by terrorist.
Likewise, before the terrorist attack on Kuje Prison on the 5th of July 2022 where they succeeded in releasing their fellow colleagues. It is on record that the DSS shared 44 intelligence reports relating to this threat with relevant agencies before the attack on the prison. This has been proved by remarks from the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Idris Wase who stated that he has went through the report, but unfortunately the relevant agencies failed to act. These are just among the few proofs that found their way to public domain as DSS does not flaunt its operations and activities to the public, rather most operations and activities are classified, and as is the norm for State and Secrete Service departments all over the world.”