A group of patriotic Nigerians popularly known as the Citizens Stability Forum (CSF), has called on 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 group made the call in a statement signed and made available to newsmen by its lead convener, Mukhtar Lawal and its Co-Convener, John Azi.
According to the statement, the current insecurity happenings in Nigeria have exposed the lack of collaboration and synergy between security agencies, adding: “The most disturbing aspect been the continuous disregard to 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 offense.”
“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 cooperation 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 of most of the unfortunate insecurity events that recently occurred,” the statement read in part.
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