A civil society and citizen’s groups coalition, the Citizens Stability Forum (CSF) has called on security agencies in Nigeria to act on intelligence provided by the Department of State Services (DSS) in containing the security threats bedevilling the country.
The forum said 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 has been the continuous disregard to security intelligence provided by the DSS to the Military, Police and paramilitary security agencies.
The secret service 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.
CSF said when there was inefficiency in collaboration or a lack of synergy with other security agencies the result would be that criminals and terrorist would be having a field day and be pulling up acts of terrorism that would otherwise be impossible for them.
The group said while the DSS had been playing its role diligently and have been feeding the relevant agencies with intelligence, other sister agencies have to as a matter of importance, collaborate with DSS to effectively secure the country.
“Unfortunately, the disregard to such critical intelligence by relevant authorities led to the loss of lives of eight Nigerian citizens, 41 hospitalised and over 60 civilians kidnapped by terrorist,” the group said in a statement that was jointly signed by its lead convener and co-convener, Muktar Lawal and John Azi respectively.
CSF said a lot of the success and ability of the DSS to meet up with its own security responsibility was down to the excellent leadership from the DSS hierarchy led by director-general of the, Mr. Yusuf Bichi.
“The DG has instilled commitment, diligence, and pro-activeness in tackling insecurity across the county. Mr Bichi has also vigorously driven improvement in welfare and wellbeing of personnel including improved and frequent payment of allowances, more investment in infrastructure in commands and formations across the country, as well as providing officers and operatives with more training and re-training opportunities,” it stated.
The collision said disregard of intelligence by other relevant security agencies has contributed to reason why the United States and its allies including the UK and Canada are wary of sharing intelligence with Nigeria, thus leading to the recent wrong and unfortunate situation of going to the public with terror alert.
