- Outlines strategies to defeat terrorists
- Wants almajiri system scrapped
The Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Security Challenges yesterday disclosed its findings on why the nation’s security agencies underperformed in the fight against insecurity.
The Senate had, in January, constituted the committee, chaired by Senator Yahaya Abdullahi, to engage the security agencies with a view to restructuring the country’s security architecture.
Abdullahi, while presenting a 74-page report during plenary yesterday, said the committee found out that the quest for personal wealth acquisition had undermined institutional coherence and was responsible for interpersonal rivalries within security services.
He said the panel, during the course of engaging heads of security agencies and stakeholders, discovered that there were ill-defined operational boundaries and overlapping jurisdictions among security services, leading to confusion in priority setting, platform acquisition, training, direction and general orientation;
He said, “There is a lot of internal incoherence and inter-personnel conflict which have led to a lot of antagonism within the security organizations. The absence or inadequacies of effective corrective mechanisms within those institutions allowed inter-personnel disputes to fester thereby undermining the operational efficiency of the services.
“Most of the agencies are operating in isolation with very little, if any, coordination between them. This most unfortunate situation can be seen from the recent face-off between the office of the IGP and the Police Service Commission which degenerated into open litigation in the law courts.
“Most recently, the public release of letters from the NSA’s Office to the service chiefs discountenancing their engagement with the chief of staff to the president bordering on security matters, is a loud testament of the level of disharmony and inter-personnel conflict and intrigues within the nation’s security and defence establishments.”
He said inter-agency rivalry and endless battles of supremacy had undermined operational effectiveness.
“This has worked against cooperation, sharing of information and effectiveness of intelligence and operational platforms for coordinated internal security operations.”
He said the security agencies tend to acquire modern technology and other force multipliers in isolation which resulted in the multiplication of incompatible platforms belonging to the different arms of services.
He said the alleged non-funding of the Office of the National Security Adviser since 2015 had undermined the effective performance of its coordinating function in the Security Architecture, and had led many agencies to question its authority and relevance in various fora, thereby adversely affecting inter-service cooperation and intelligence sharing.
He blamed the failure to define functions and boundaries between intelligence agencies on defective laws governing the operation of the Department of State Services, the National Intelligence Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency.
According to him, the prevalence of importing all the nation’s national security equipment and gadgets undermines the security of the nation and amounts to colossal wastage when the equipments remain unserviceable due to lack of components and spare parts.
The committee said the existing laws governing the security architecture were antiquated with conflicts, overlapping of jurisdictions and lack of definition of role, among other.
It recommended the amendments of the Acts establishing security agencies to address the identified challenges and make them more efficient and effective.
It also recommended that the Police Command structure be decentralized with operational and budgetary powers vested in the zonal commands.
The committee also recommended that the almajiri system be scrapped and the out-of-school children be ploughed into the normal school system.
