Insecurity: CSO Urges Security Agencies to Act on Intelligence Report Provided by DSS

•Laments lack of synergy

Udora Orizu in Abuja

A civil society organisation 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, Mukhtar Lawal, called for more synergy among the security agencies in the country.

It urged all the security agencies and the public to collectively work together to stem the current insecurity situation in the country.

The organisation lamented that the current insecurity happenings in Nigeria have exposed the lack of collaboration and synergy between security agencies in the country.

According to it, the most disturbing aspect been the continuous disregard for security intelligence provided by the Department of State Services (DSS) to the Military, Police and Paramilitary security agencies, something he said in some countries could be treated as treasonable offence.

The CSF noted that a lot of the success and ability of the DSS to meet up with its own security responsibility was due to the excellent leadership from the DSS hierarchy led by Director-General of the DSS, Mr. Yusuf Bichi.

The DG, the organisation said had 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.”