The lack of harmony among all the security agencies in Nigeria is a source of concern to lawmakers looking into a recent fracas between two major agencies.
Babagana Monguno
The National Security Adviser, NSA, Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd) has given reasons the country’s intelligence agencies would continue to clash.
Monguno said the clashes will continue unless the National Security Agencies Decree 1986 is amended.
The retired General was quoted in a report of the Senate ad-hoc committee that probed the clash between officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Department of State Service, DSS, and the Nigeria Intelligence Agency, NIA, in 2017.
The agencies clashed last year when EFCC operatives attempted to arrest a former Director-General of NIA, Ayodele Oke, and Mr Ita Ekpeyong, a former Director-General of the DSS.
The NSA expressed concern over the lack of unity and cooperation among intelligence agencies in the country.
He said, “The current state of disjointedness and disharmony amongst sister agencies. This resulted due to the National Security Agencies Decree 1986; Cap 278, Cap 278 LFN section 14 01-2 which has stripped the NSA of the power to check the other Security Agencies that have now become independent of his office due to their now ‘easy’ access to the President. Thus, there is a desperate need to streamline the Agencies and make them answerable to the NSA.”
He further explained to the lawmakers that the President was aware of the state of things and also presented evidences of instances where his duties were usurped due to lack of discipline exhibited by security agencies.
He said he was not aware of the EFCC chairman’s move to arrest any of the former intelligence chiefs until after the media reports and that the resistance made by the security agencies during the arrest cast some aspersions.