Where are you when we need you most?
I have been associated with this service for more than two decades now. From the days it was named the Nigerian Security Organization (NSO) – can you still feel the dread at the mention of those names! Those were the days “when men were men and women were married by those men who deserve them” (Cyprian Ekwensi, ‘Passport of Mallam Illia’).
I have watched SSS perform wonders - miracles for Church goers and magical arts for those who look at life from other perspectives. I have watched the service take knocks from the authorities, get rubbished - and also seen it resurrect with honour and majesty, doing what it knows best - provide care and protection to the people of this country, a thankless society of high magnitude, you could say.
I have seen the SSS save governments. I have seen its hand preserving the Nigerian polity. No other agency in this country can boast of a better place in the stability of this country than the SSS.
It gives destabilizing feeling today to observe that while this country is speedily advancing in criminality both against the state and the individual citizen, the one hope of years past; the SSS seem to be nowhere to be found.
Kidnapping is a heinous state crime. When armed robbery, highway or home invasions, become rampant, it becomes a state crime. When bullion van robbery and robbery attacks directed at banks and large corporate institutions increase to some level, it moves to realm of state crime. By this implication, the SSS gets involved in the only way it knows best “intelligence collection” to curtail these nefarious activities. At this point, Police methods fall terribly short of the criminal capabilities. The only solution is found in intelligence gathering and special operations. These are the realm where SSS and its progenitors have excelled.
In the last two years, we have watched criminal elements graduate from orchestrated bank robberies, bullion van targets to kidnappings. Kidnappings have now replaced the regular armed robbery incidents both of highway and home invasions. The later seem to have gone out of vogue and given way to kidnappings which has made everybody vulnerable. Little children are picked from their homes and schools. Wives and old parents of those considered to have money are kidnapped. Huge sums of money are paid out as ransom. Some communities in Abia State have visited their neighbouring communities warning to ask their children to stop coming to kidnap their sons and daughters or risk communal wars.
Before 2007, kidnappings were the preserve of the Niger Delta militants and other criminal elements. Now no state in Nigeria is immune from kidnapping. From Uyo in sleepy Akwa State to nondescript Borno State. From Ibadan to Awka in Anambra State. From Enugu to the ABAndoned city otherwise known as Aba in Abia State. Kidnapping is the unending nightmare. Nobody knows when we can wake up from it.
The only way to deal the death nail on this menace is through the instrumentality of intelligence gathering and management. No other organization in this country has the requisite training, expertise and statutory responsibility for this aspect of national security but the state security service.s
At the present, the operations and activities of the Nigeria Police and their military joint operations partners harm rather than protect the people of this country. We have more shootout with unarmed civilians at checkpoints than with the robbers and kidnappers. About 95% of Police arrests are of innocent persons and most times the victims of the crimes for which they are arrested. This is why the “awaiting trial” bank is swelling everyday. They don’t have charges for the majority of the people they have put in awaiting trial, hence they rot or die in prison without trial.
Violent revolutions have served mankind well some of the times in the past. I abhor violence for whatever intents and purposes. The only way to avoid violent revolution in this country in the next five to ten years of continuing criminality of the magnitude we witness today is to wake from the slumber it presently appears to be, the STATE SECURITY SERVICE. There are enough resources available in this country to have a formidable intelligence outfit that would surpass the efficiency of the criminal elements in this country.
The men and women I have associated with the SSS are the best crop you can find in any organization, nation or continent. Their present state is getting worse than a comatose. They can ill-afford education for their children, transportation to their offices, not to talk of the resources to get about and collect information. Years ago, one officer remarked that in this service, people are left to the point that they could go to the person they have under surveillance to borrow money. One local government chairman once said and I quote “your organization cannot you send you here and maroon you here”. You can imagine where that is coming from.
Those remaining in service these are those who have nowhere else to go. Yet there was a time that this organization was the destination of all the best materials in this country. People scrambled to transfer their services from all other services to the SSS.
WAY FORWARD
Some Truism
The SSS and its statutory role and other roles it could be called upon to fulfill in this country are unavoidable.
The SSS as it is at present is dangerous for Nigeria.
Nigeria needs a virile SSS.
Nigeria needs a funded SSS.
Nigeria needs motivated SSS personnel.
Nigeria needs a trained and retrained SSS (not just training and re-training on tradecraft but there is need to invite guest speakers on all fields of endeavour (quarterly and or bi-annually) – motivational speakers, professionals and experts in the field of engineering, technology, telecommunication, arms and ammunition, industrial security practitioners, research scientists in several fields, drug experts, life coaches, health and fitness coaches, etc to speak to personnel on regular basis)
Nigeria needs SSS personnel who have multiple sources of income (MSI) (not gifts or bribes. Not doing business with stolen hours that should have been put in service. The SSS leadership can help officers and men acquire skills that can help them use their spare time to make money. MSI is also Multiple Sources of Information. MSI would provide both legitimate income for officers, cover for their operations and opportunity for intelligence gathering.) MULTIPLE SOURCES OF INCOME TRAINING CAN BE PROVIDED BY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT/LIFE COACHING EXPERTS. WE HAVE MANY OF THEM IN NIGERIA NOW.)
Nigeria needs Life Insurance covered SSS personnel fully paid for by government providing resources for the education and re-establishment of the family of personnel who die in active service.
Nigeria needs SSS Personnel who are willing to die for this country. (For this to happen, Nigeria need to be made a country for all Nigerians and if that is not immediately possible, for the SSS personnel. After all, they are carrying the burden of keeping the country one until it could evolve into a country for all.)
Historical Incidents Justifying Need
Murtala Muhammed, military head of state from 1973 cared little about security intelligence. The then Police “E” Department which was the progenitor of NSO was ignored. Their warnings on the need for security protocol for the head of state were discounted. Buka Suka Dimka came calling one early morning and the head of state was felled on the street. His successor, Olusegun Obasanjo got wise. He created the NSO out of the “E” Department. We are all witnesses to the history that he made. He handed over power to a civilian government in 1979. He came back from death row in 1999 to become President of Nigeria for two terms. Obasanjo’s tenure was inglorious for the rest of the country. But he invested heavily in the intelligence community, even if the pervading corruption of that time did not allow his investments to water down to the field officers.
President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida wanted to wish away the then NSO. He curtailed its operations, destroyed the morale of its officers and men. When Orkar came calling in 1990, it was SSS that saved him. He then decided to resuscitate the service. The damage was already done. His efforts and that of Abacha, Abubakar (heads of state) and their civilian successor Obasanjo hinted earlier tried hard to re-orient the damaged service. It had not really gone far but went a long way.
Military coups may not be our challenge now given that the Military have fully discredited themselves as all their nationalistic claims have been proven false by unbridled corruption and power drunkenness; we have a challenge today more than that of military take over – kidnapping.
Tomorrow! I love you for Yar’Adua
I love tomorrow for many reasons among which are the good but for nothing excuse it provides me. Best gift of tomorrow for me is the opportunity to hope to do a new thing. However, I love today best. Today is the day of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. He has done the first best thing by the appointment of Mr. A.A. Gadzama as the Director General of SSS. An insider as Director General is a moral booster of its own. It has the hopes and possibility of engendering commitment in officers and men. The service suffered much under the hand of non-members. When the Police, Military and Foreign Service personnel have been saddled on the SSS, they have proven to be a saddle indeed. As a watcher of the security industry, I would like to add that there seem to have been no other thing done to make the service work other than the appointment of an insider as Director General.
More need to be done. Many a serving members of the SSS feel that instead of the service being left the way it is now, it is rather better to disband it. The is a dangerous tune, albeit, a true testimony of the state of affairs with the service at this time.
MY PROPOSAL
My proposal, fellow countrymen and dear President Yar’Adua is for a powerful REJUVENATION COMMITTEE made up of elements from all strata of the service, national policy experts/advisers, retired officers of the service who are still updating themselves in industrial security practice and or academic pursuits, presidency representative, etc. Their job would be to come together in a well funded intensive meeting of 6 weeks or thereabout to fashion out sustainable motivational elements for the effectiveness and efficiency of the service.
I fear strongly that we may regret the abandonment of SSS sooner than later.
Francis
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