DSS As New Attack Dog

It is difficult to hazard a guess on the main reason
behind the current attack-dog image of the Department of State Services (DSS). Is it intended to portray an organization that has repositioned itself to key into President Muhammadu Buhari’s resolve to wage war on insecurity and corruption?
It can’t possibly be about insecurity, for, if it were, the organization would concentrate its energy on providing the much needed intelligence that is glaringly lacking in the Northeastern part of the country, where Boko Haram insurgents are running amok, killing defenseless Nigerians with renewed gusto, in manner that suggests the victory parade that began in the closing days of the Jonathan administration has since come to an abrupt end. Nor has it anything to do with the effort to fight corruption. That is the brief of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
At first it was the duo of Sambo Dasuki and Gordon Obuah, the erstwhile national security adviser and chief security officer to former President, Goodluck Jonathan, respectively, who had a taste of the poisonous bite of the new attack dog, triggering a national outrage.
The agency has yet to tell Nigerians the outcome of its 10-hour siege on the home of Dasuki, which it said was occasioned by intelligence report that linked the retired army colonel with allegations of subversion. It has not made known its motive for detaining Obuah and causing unnecessary anxiety over his health. Now, it is the turn of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to suffer in the hands of the security agency. The question needs to be asked why the DSS is carrying on as if it has a mandate to hunt anybody that was associated with the former president and his party.
The two election tribunals for Akwa Ibom and Rivers states currently sitting in Abuja are supposed to listen to and determine petitions filed by candidates of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the April 11, 2015 governorship election. Ordinarily, the DSS should have no role to play in matters concerning the petitions and the work of the tribunals. But that has not been the case since the tribunals curiously and questionably relocated from states where the election took place to the federal capital – the only two cases in which tribunals are sitting outside the states where elections were held.
The DSS has assigned to itself the responsibility of assisting the APC in whatever way it deems practicable to achieve at the tribunals what it could not achieve at election venues in Akwa Ibom and Rivers states. This includes harassment and intimidation of not only PDP officials and witnesses that volunteer to give evidence at the tribunals, but also officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who were directly or remotely involved in elections in the two states.
Isn’t it curious that the DSS is beaming its searchlight on the two states where PDP has won since 1999, while ignoring northern states where under aged almajiris were seen on video voting at polling booths under the supervision of INEC officials, with security agencies, including the DSS itself, looking the other way? The overzealousness of the security agency in matters that have to do with the governorship election in the two states, which has caused quite some hoopla, gives the impression that there are only two governorship election tribunals in the country. How many people know that tribunals have sat to determine petitions relating to the same governorship election in Lagos and Imo states? How come we didn’t hear of the involvement of the DSS in those two sates which, coincidentally(?), are APC states? The objective is unquestionably to achieve a pre-determined outcome at the two tribunals sitting in Abuja.
Despite initial hiccups occasioned by non-functioning card readers, the 2015 general elections were universally acknowledged to be much better than previous elections in terms of freeness, fairness and inclusiveness. It was the reason Jonathan did the unusual and unexpected by conceding defeat and congratulating Buhari even when results were still being collated.
At his various meetings with President Barack Obama, Secretary of State, John Kerry, and other key officials during his official visit to the United States, President Buhari thanked the country for its support to Nigeria during the elections, which enabled it to have free and fair elections. At no time did the president say that elections were free all over Nigeria except in Rivers and Akwa Ibom. What the DSS is trying to do is to pressurize the election tribunals into proofing to the entire world that Buhari’s assessment, indeed, the assessment of the international community, was wrong.
Pray, what does the DSS hope to achieve? If the objective is to assist the APC in its quest to add the two states to the 19 states it ‘won’ on April 11, then the effort is a bill that lawmakers would describe as dead on arrival.
How could it be imagined that Akwa Ibom, for instance, which is traditionally conservative as evident in elections from post-independence Nigeria till date, would change inclination overnight because an aggrieved individual switched camps a few months to elections? When did the state become one that an individual can lead by the nose?
Let it be known that if elections were to be conducted 10 times in Akwa Ibom, PDP would win hands down. Governor Udom Emmanuel is a product of an administration that changed the course of the history of the state in a manner no previous administration had done. The people of the state voted for him because they know he will continue in the tradition of excellence that his predecessor established. There couldn’t have been a better successor to Akpabio.
President Buhari, who came into office with overwhelming goodwill, should call the director general of the DSS, who happens to be his kinsman, to order, before he destroys that goodwill so early in the morning.
Jimmy is a public affairs analyst based in Lagos

Idiongo Jimmy