Unlike the 2012 dispute between the Department of State Service (DSS) and the police regarding the identity of those who murdered Olaitan Oyerinde, Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s one-time Principal Private Secretary, the fresh misunderstanding between the two security agencies over who was responsible for the abduction last September of former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Olu Falae must be resolved to avoid another ugly repeat. In the Benin murder case, the DSS had in August 2012 announced that Mr Oyerinde’s murder was a robbery gone awry. According to the DSS, six people were involved in the incident, three of them robbers, and the other three receivers of stolen goods. A month earlier, the police had arrested five suspects whom they announced received N200,000 out of a fee of N20m to ‘assassinate’ Mr Oshiomhole’s aide in May 2012. A certain David Ugolor was the mastermind, said the police. But Reverend Ugolor, a civil society activist, was later absolved of the crime by a Benin High Court thus effectively undermining the police case.
In the latest case, the DSS early this week paraded two Fulani youths for the abduction of Chief Falae. They were reported to have been arrested at a hotel in Lokoja, Kogi State. According to the Service, the suspects confessed that the operation was masterminded by probably another Fulani man named Dattijo, who allegedly absconded with the N5m ransom. A few days later, however, the police announced the arrest of five suspects whom they claimed were responsible for Chief Falae’s abduction, and from whom over N800,000 naira of the ransom was recovered. The 2012 Benin case was never really professionally and satisfactorily resolved. There is little hope this one will be resolved to the country’s satisfaction. The fresh disagreement between the two security agencies has, however, brought to the fore not just the embarrassing lack of synergy between the agencies but the need for the DSS to abandon its old paradigm of law enforcement and public relations.
While announcing the breakthrough in the Falae kidnap case, the spokesman of the DSS, Abdullahi Garba, indicated that the incident was ‘a mere criminal act’ by young men who needed money for the Sallah celebration and a wedding, perhaps as opposed to what he said some thought was an ethnic misunderstanding between the Fulani and the Yoruba, or more accurately between herdsmen and farmers. According to Mr Garba, “The Service wishes to state that the abductors are mere criminals…Investigations have further revealed that their action was not targeted at Falae as a statesman and prominent Yoruba leader. We called this news conference because some people were unduly giving ethnic colouration to this.” If indeed the DSS breakthrough is a true reflection of the crime, the security agency must be celebrated for their quick and professional response. But it is doubtful whether anyone recalls when the crime was suggested by anyone anywhere or in the media as an act directed specifically at Chief Falae because of his Yoruba standing.
What the media reported, and what Yoruba leaders argued, was that if someone of Chief Falae’s standing could be so humiliated, and the police proved helpless, then the insecurity in the Yoruba countryside, which the Fulani herdsmen were exacerbating, had become an issue deserving Yoruba response. Mr Garba ought to have recognised this nuance. The DSS misrepresentation of the misunderstanding reminds the public of the excesses of the former DSS spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, who went beyond the bounds of duty to impute motives and make dangerous insinuations. The DSS is an elite security agency, far more polished than any other security agency in the country, and more well equipped than any apart from the military. Apart from appropriately reflecting its enviable status as a cerebral organisation and exhibiting the competence to deconstruct security issues confronting the country accurately, it must go the extra length to staff and equip its public relations department adequately to offer services necessary to complement or even match its achievements.
To do this, and in addition to equipping itself for the complex and sophisticated security challenges of the modern era, the DSS will need to develop a new paradigm of relating with target audiences and the country as a whole. Nothing makes this more urgent than the disservice done to the organisation by Ms Ogar’s partisan and offensive approach, and now Mr Garba’s patrician and condescending expatiation of the Falae kidnap. Hear Mr Garba: “The duo arrested are Abdullahi Usman (aka Kadiri) and Babawuro Kato; the Service wishes to state that the abductors were mere criminals. Nigerians are therefore enjoined to live peacefully with one another and shun attempts by mischief-makers to give this unfortunate incident an ethnic or any other colouration and use same to cause disaffection among the populace. To this effect, this Service wishes to appeal to all Nigerians to be law abiding and responsible in their commentary on sensitive issues affecting national security. The Service will not hesitate to deal decisively with anybody, no matter how highly placed, in accordance with the law as long as such a person(s) failed to be a respecter of the law or peacefully co-exist among the good citizens of this great nation.”
It was necessary for the DSS to act speedily in cracking the Falae case and dispelling what it described as ethnic motives or overtones to the crime, that is assuming the Service can reconcile its findings with police conclusions. But by describing those who took very strong exceptions to the abduction as mischief-makers, even though the abduction was compounded by the destruction of Chief Falae’s farm and other farmlands by herdsmen, it does little to assuage what is evidently the alienation some ethnic groups have begun to feel in the past few years. The DSS is not just about power and security. In its speeches and reactions to security challenges, the Service must be sensitive to the country’s ethnic and cultural configurations. Mr Garba displayed no such sensitivity when he talked of ‘mischief-makers’ and ‘dealing decisively with anybody, no matter how highly placed…’ Surely, the DSS is capable of weighing the security challenges constituted by the herdsmen/farmers conflict in other parts of the country, particularly Plateau and Nasarawa. As the Falae case proved, if the conflict between herdsmen and farmers is not tackled with the dispassion and foresight it requires, it can quickly metamorphose into an ethnic conflict.
Overall, that stern but insensitive talk by the DSS also points to one of the continuing incongruities of modern Nigeria — the feeling and posturing by security agencies and sometimes the government itself that they are superior to the people they serve by virtue of the excessive and often unconstitutional powers they wield. If Nigeria is to become and remain stable and peaceful, the country’s governing and security paradigms must change fundamentally to enable different ethnic groups and religions cohabit under an inspiring body of laws. For, in the final analysis, what guarantees peace and stability is not coercion or oppression, but justice and equity. As a DSS operative himself, Mr Garba will recall just how sternly Ms Ogar addressed the public on behalf of the Service, and sometimes how brutally and partisan the Service treated the opposition and those who had unkind and even unflattering views of former president Goodluck Jonathan. Yet, that disposition neither sustained the government in office beyond the approbation of the electorate nor burnished the reputation of the DSS.
The DSS must see reason to modify its operating paradigm. Since it was set up under a law, it must not seek to expand the frontiers of that law beyond what the constitution approves. In its dealings with the public, it must operate under the highest ethical standards and principles, recognising that the people it serves and addresses deserve to be treated not as a conquered people but as a people with whom the Service shares common destiny and hope.
