Why our intelligence gathering strategy always fails -By Ethelbert Oney

Historically, the root of intelligence gathering can be traced to the biblical times when Moses sent some Israelites into the Land of Canaan for reconnaissance. Popular concerns today in the country are over well-known facts such as the continued existence of the Boko Haram, intelligence failures, inability to question those mentioned directly or indirectly as sponsors of Boko Haram, and widespread disagreement over whether the current intelligence and law enforcement infrastructure is capable of handling the additional demands of our counter-terrorism mission.

New mission on Boko Haram and a different political climate from the usual covert or overt means have placed additional demands on our intelligence agencies. They must be able to collect intelligence against new targets, many of which require different collection methods than they are used to. They must meet different interagency sharing requirements; cooperate with civilian service agencies with the law enforcement agencies; maintaining efficiency and operating under closer public scrutiny for the purpose of accountability.

For our intelligence agencies to meet these demands, the following solutions may be necessary: increases in the scope, power, authority, and size of the national intelligence structure; a restructuring and recentralization of our intelligence; and the creation of a new agency to handle domestic terrorist activities in the country. Simply put, our security and intelligence agencies must realise that intelligence work is far from physical, emotional or showman bravado. Now let’s consider the three types of intelligence that exists within the frame.

Strategic Intelligence: This provides the law enforcement agencies with an overview of criminal capabilities, vulnerabilities and intentions with respect to certain specific areas such as Boko Haram activities. This type of formula allows law enforcement agencies adequate time and information to formulate plans to combat terrorist activities.

The action of operational intelligence is geared towards the enforcement objectives. This type of intelligence provides data pertaining to specific individuals or organizations, which have already been targeted for immobilization. Information provided by this type of intelligence usually includes modus operandi, sources of arms supply and routes utilized. Tactical Intelligence is more oriented toward case prosecution than the other two types. It is targeted towards a specific criminal activity such as terrorism with the goal of neutralizing that activity. Tactical intelligence is short term in nature, usually developed day by day.

The effectiveness of any law enforcement organization depends, to a reasonable extent, on its ability to obtain, process and effectively utilize intelligence information. Their ultimate objective should be to identify and immobilize criminals and terrorist organizations such as Boko Haram. To that end, let’s consider the six basic steps of intelligence circle. They include planning, collection, evaluation, analyzing, disseminating and policy. Planning is the most difficult aspect of intelligence circle because any mistake in planning will affect the whole circle. Wrong planning may lead to loss of lives and domestic or international threats.

The gathering of data involves different mechanisms, such as clandestine or open source. Collection must be planned and focused to be effective. In order for collection to be efficient, it must be focused and directed against a target. The methods of collection utilized must be coordinated with respect to the target in principle; this has been our biggest challenge with regards to Boko Haram. A coordinated approach to investigating a given criminal activity saves resources by avoiding duplication of efforts.

Evaluation: After information has been collected, it is the responsibility of the analyst to determine whether or not the data is useful and/or accurate. If the information emanates from an informant, the analyst should determine the informant’s past and source reliability. For example, the analyst must maintain a code to establish whether the information is highly reliable, usually reliable, seldom reliable, or reliability unknown.

Analysis: To many, this is the most crucial part of intelligence circle. The function that assembles bits and pieces of information from many sources and puts them together to show some sort of pattern and meaning is the analysis. Boko Haram’s existence has been meaningful for lack of competent analyst within the agencies. Dissemination: It refers to the information dispatched by patrolmen or even informers to headquarters of the agency.

A delicate area, if information is dispatched wrongly it may create a serious damage to the whole circle and the organisation in general. Dissemination in normal circumstances must be on need to know basis. policy remains the final consumer of finished intelligence; failure may occur at this stage mainly where preference is attached to irrelevant intelligence due to corruption. Policy makers should give our intelligence agencies some sense of how their intelligence requirements should be, and discuss any adjustments that needed to be made to any parts of the process.

There must be a close cooperation between intelligence and enforcement personnel in order to create a viable working bond between the two offices.