An Insecure Security Agency -By Ike Willie-Nwobu

As Nigeria continues to battle a virulent combination of hate and terrorism, some of the country’s top security institutions have acquired a belligerent edge. The fact that some of them are creaking under the pressure indicates the level of stress they are under.

When human rights lawyer Maxwell Opara led a group of lawyers in protest against the continued detention of former Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele at the Federal High Court in Abuja on July 17,he could not have envisaged that at the end of that day, he would be given a new name by the mouth of the Department of State Services.(DSS)

Shortly after they addressed the press, the agency took to its Twitter handle to taunt and troll the lawyers describing them as “IPOB lawyers” and “Charge and bail lawyers.”

The clap back from the DSS was expected as the lawyers had accused its Director-General of lawlessness. But beyond the trolls, the truth is that in the past eight years, the DSS appears to have placed itself above the law in Nigeria.

In 2015, Muhammadu Buhari won elections and was sworn in as Nigeria’s 15th president.

While it appeared that Buhari would be a departure from his corrupt and inept predecessors, his democratic credentials were very much in doubt. As a former military president, he had shown a predilection for the iron fist and many Nigerians asked if the leopard could change its spots.

It soon emerged that It could not. In 2016,some judges, including some Supreme Court justices, were roused from their sleep in the dead of night. When an entire country rose in protest, the culprit was found to be the DSS, wielding a long list of misdemeanors bordering on corruption.

If the fact that judges were given a rude awakening in the middle of the night to answer to nebulous corruption charges was not alarming enough, it was only the beginning of the DSS’s adventures as it was practically given complete freedom under Buhari to ride roughshod over Nigerians.
There was the invasion of the Federal High Court in Abuja in 2019 amidst other excesses.

Since he assumed power in May, Tinubu has been more than happy to continue from where his predecessor stopped in using the DSS to do what only courts are constitutionally empowered to do.
Godwin Emefiele has been in the custody of the DSS since he was removed from his post in June.

It took an order of the Federal High Court for the DSS to charge him to court for illegal possession of firearms.

Until now, there is no criminal charge regarding the terrorist financing he was accused of in the media. There is every indication that the sole charge hurriedly framed to thwart the order of the Federal High Court was to keep him longer in unlawful custody and nothing else.

It necessarily begs the question of how powerful the DSS has grown. Is the agency ready to bend the knees to the laws of Nigeria and Nigerians? How much of a cue to the actions of the DSS give to other similarly power security agencies to obey or disobey the law in Nigeria.

While it is true that Nigeria is facing unprecedented security challenges, it is even truer that those security challenges would best be contained by democratic measures which respect the rule of law and not by actions which flout it.

While arbitrary actions like infinitely detaining individuals who are yet to be convicted of any crime may be attractive and even seem effective in the short term, the weakening of the rule of law often extracts a heavy cost in the long term.

If a court of law always has to make an order before a key security agency like the DSS acts on people in their custody, then it is enough evidence that those in charge of the agency have no respect for the law which establishes them.

Blatantly associating a group of lawyers with an organization the Federal Government has proscribed as a terrorist group, without evidence also shows the failure of the communications strategy of the DSS.

Long suspected to be an opaque, autocratic organization which prefers the bludgeon to the scalpel the tantrums of the DSS via Twitter appears to confirm its puerile indiscretion.

Discretion is the better part of valor. In doing its job, the DSS must not only be seen to abide the law but must show pristine professionalism.

President Tinubu is just settling down in office, but he must ensure that the DSS does not tar his government with the brush of illegality and the impunity it crafted under the previous administration.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com