The intelligence he gathered is
alleged to have been a significant
factor in Israel’s success in the
Six Day War.
The Special Branch Department
of the Nigerian Police was at its
height a pretty good service
nipping most threats to state
security in the bud either at the
planning stages or before they
became operational.
The Special Branch was so well
entrenched and pervasive that it
successfully infiltrated most
social, political and religious
organisations in the country
including Town unions, Churches,
mosques, political parties and
groups of interest to the state.
The assassination of Murtala
Mohammed in 1975 was the excuse
needed by the military to subjugate
the Special Branch Department
under the control of Military
Intelligence. In 1976, the Department
was excised out of the police and
merged with elements of Military
Intelligence to form the Nigerian
Security Organisation under then
Colonel Abdullahi Mohammed.
This singular action debilitated the
police of its ability to engage in
serious security and political
intelligence gathering. The NSO did
not fare better either because the
efficiency of the Special Branch
officers were subsumed under the
leadership of officers from the
Directorate of Military intelligence.
The result was a service that relied
less on pain-staking detective work,
worked blind most times such as
the failure to detect the Maitasine
rebellion and emphasized executive
protection and the overwhelming
use of force in reaction to national
security threats.
Whether in Zaki-Biam, Odi, the
Niger-Delta or in the Boko-Haram
stronghold of Borno, a cursory look
at the operational style of the
security services would show that
there is a distinct over-reliance on
crushing force which at the end of
the day serves no strategic purpose
as the absence of good actionable
intelligence only results in the
destruction of local infrastructure by
the security forces while the
operational masterminds behind the
assault on the state and its agents
remain at large only to respond
viciously o the state’ brutal actions
months or years later.
The Nigerian Police requires a total,
comprehensive overhaul of its
operational infrastructure, assets
and style. There is an urgent need to
re-invigorate the Intelligence and
Investigative Bureaus of the police
both at the national and local levels.
There is need to return to the
halcyon days of the Special Branch.
|
The FIIB and the various SIIB’s are
manifestly deficient in handling
political and security intelligence, I
recommend that assets be deployed
from the Department of State
Services to manage the
administrative functions and
operational acvities of the FIIB and
the SIIB’s for a period of 10 years to
allow for the efficient capability of
the Bureau to undertake security
intelligence operations as well as
train police officers attached to the
Bureau to appreciate the nuances of
political and security intelligence
operations.
This move will also encourage an
environment that promotes
investigative, operational style
tempered with analytical curiosity
which the police no doubt lack. I
note however that the problem of
encouraging intelligence analysis
and imaginative, critical thinking is a
problem all the security services in
the country have as a result of their
history and environment especially
the military years which geared
them towards internal security,
criminal investigation, and anti-
subversive activities.
Furthermore, there is an imperative
to interrogate the method of
appointing the leadership of the
Nigerian police Force. The pertinent
questions to ask include; must the
Federal or state police chiefs be
police officers? Can the ventilation
and assimilation of new ideas and
new paradigms on effective policing
be guaranteed by someone who
has been bureaucratized in the
system for over thirty years? What
is wrong with an officer of the
National intelligence Agency or the
Department of State Services or a
serving or retired judge heading the
police force? Wouldn’t the adoption
of external leadership from outside
the police assist the force appreciate
better he limitations in the way it
operates, makes use of the product
of its operations and in evaluating
whether the operations themselves
are really worthwhile.
The questions are by no means
exhaustive. I posit that the
institutionalization of the leadership
of the police within its calcified
bureaucracy has done more harm
than good. In addition the Nigerian
Police Force needs to be situated
within the context of contemporary
modern policing methods that
emphasize the use of science and
technology to reach acceptable
judicial conclusions. At the last
count, the force had only a sole
forensic laboratory in Lagos that
lacks the basic functionalities of a
serious police lab. The Jonathan
administration needs to ensure that
each state police command owns its
own forensic lab while extensive
training of police officers in science
based evidence gathering should be
undertaken as a matter of urgent
national importance.
With no coherent counter-terrorism
strategy, there is need for the Office
of the National Security Adviser and
the office of the Coordinator on
Counter-terrorism to adopt a
strategy that places the assets and
capabilities of the Military at the heart
of this strategy in order to effectively
confront the challenges posed by
nihilist counter-state actors. The
intelligence corps of the Army, Air
Force and Navy has as a result of
long years of military rule been
better trained and better
infrastructured to challenge counter-
state activities.
Intelligence is the key to national
security. It was strategic intelligence
planning and operations that led to
the assassination of Osama bin
Laden and hundreds of Al-Qaeda
operatives and commanders across
the globe. It is proper intelligence
that has allowed the state of Israel to
terminate without prejudice those
who threaten its survival. It is good
intelligence not heavy handed
response that will secure peace for
Nigeria