DSS boss at senate says insecurity, threat to 2019 elections

The Director-General of Department of State Services (DSS), Alhaji Lawal Daura, yesterday said the 2019 general election is being threatened by the current spate of insecurity across the country.

Daura said this at the National Assembly while making presentation before the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of the Current Security Infrastructure in Nigeria.

Giving an inkling of what transpired at the committee, its chairman, Senate Leader, Senator Ahmad Lawan (APC Yobe North), said the security chief was apprehensive of the success of 2019 general elections “with all the hate speeches and insecurity prevailing in the polity.”

Lawan, who presented the Committee’s 38-page Report at Plenary on Wednesday quoted Daura as saying “the country is getting more divided like never before due to the lack of synergy between traditional institutions and security agencies, as well as hate speeches that have dominated the political space”.

He further said that other security chiefs who appeared before the committee spoke in the same vein and explained that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Yusuf Buratai, on his part, identified the nation’s major security challenges to include Boko Haram threats, militancy, cultism, secessionist and extremist groups(IPOB and IMN), inter-ethnic, religious and communal violence.

Buratai was also said to have identified impediments to combating internal security challenges to include absence of governance and ungoverned space, inadequate intelligence information sharing mechanisms among security agencies, inadequate resourcing of security agencies, administration of criminal justice system, porous borders and poor border controls, poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunities and cultural and social impediments.

Lawan added that the committee observed that the security agencies require professional skills, equipment and technology to contain security issues adding that agencies lack critical equipment and where they exist they are obsolete.

He said the Committee thereafter came up with an 18-point recommendation which include identification of poverty as a constant threat to national security and that government should ensure its reduction.

“Nigeria’s growing population will challenge anti-poverty strategies to a point where national security will be severely compromised unless the economy is radically improved at this stage and in future.”

The chairman said the nation’s basic security infrastructure requires comprehensive review with the political structure being a major factor in the review as well as the nature of the challenges the nation faces.

Other recommendations include the need to isolate current security challenges from political partisanship, narrow political interests and ethno- religious sentiments.

The report also emphasised that the basic structure in the management of national security should be revisited by the Presidency to address weaknesses in co-ordination, collaboration and synergy.

“All the nation’s security assets are dangerously stressed by current security challenges and there is the need to increase the size of of the Nigeria Police, the military and other Para-military agencies “.

Some Senators including Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central), Kabiru Gaya( Kano South), James Manager(Delta South), Theodore Orji (Abia Central) took turns to debate the Committee’s report and advised the leadership of the Senate to ensure implementation by the Executive.