Falae abduction: DSS needs new paradigm
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.
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