As Senate probes lopsided recruitments in DSS

Last week, the Senate resolved to investigate the alleged lopsided recruitments embarked upon by the Department of State Services (DSS). Group Politics Editor, Taiwo Adisa, presents some of the questions awaiting the DSS in the Red Chamber.

The Department of State Services (DSS), otherwise known as the State Security Services (SSS), is that anonymous security outfit usually not known for display of political character. Its business is to defend the state and its interests in accordance with laid down statutes. Over the years, the agency has been seen and largely not heard. Even under the last administration, when it created a formal office of a spokesperson, its operations still largely remained anonymous. Whenever the Senate or the National Assembly has issues to clarify from that agency, such meetings are held behind closed doors, apparently to preserve the secret service agency that works more like a masquerade.

But it appears the invincibility is about to be broken in the senate right now. Last week, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Senator Tijjani Abubakar Kaura, raised a point of order to seek the leave of the Senate to investigate the secret police. With Senator Kaura’s submission, the DSS might have to be derobed in the public for the first time.

And the development is all about the making of that agency itself.

Reports in the media in recent times had indicated that the security agency had engaged in a heavily skewed recruitment exercise which completely negated the Federal Character Principle as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999.

The reports indicated that the recruitment exercise was so skewed against the South to the extent that only one state in the North West (Katsina) has more candidates than the entire six states of the South West.

In dealing with issues of Federal and State Character, Section 14(3) and (4) of the 1999 Constitution remain very clear.

Section 14. (3) reads: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.

(4) “The composition of the Government of a State, a local government council, or any of the agencies of such Government or council, and the conduct of the affairs of the Government or council or such agencies shall be carried out in such manner as to recognise the diversity of the people within its area of authority and the need to promote a sense of belonging and loyalty among all the people of the Federation.”

For agencies delicately placed in charge of the nation’s security apparatus, the need to maintain the national balance should remain paramount and that is why the intervention of the Senate is widely welcome.

Last Thursday, the Senate commenced investigations into allegation of lopsided recruitments into the DSS in the last recruitment exercise conducted by the agency.

Senator Tijjani Abubakar Kaura, who chairs the Committee on Federal Character and lnter-governmental Affairs, announced that his committee had commenced the probe of the DSS as a result of the volume of petitions received from Nigerians on the matter.

He took the floor through Order 43 of the Senate Standing Orders 2015 as amended   explaining that the intervention of his committee became imperative following a flurry of petitions received from concerned Nigerians on recent recruitment exercise carried out by DSS. He said that the committee was determined to investigate the recent recruitment in to the DSS which he said is considered as highly lopsided in favour of a particular state and section of the country.

He stated that the committee’s decision to check the lopsided recruitments by the DSS would go a long way in restoring the confidence of Nigerians in the principle of federal character which, he said, is required for the conduct of such exercise, especially as the law envisages that it would be carried out on the basis of equity, justice and fairness.

The Senator’s explanations were targeted at two things. First was to intimate the Senate the activities of his committee and the second was to secure the leave of the Senate in the investigation being conducted.

Senate President Bukola Saraki, who ruled on the motion, gave the committee the go-ahead to investigate the recruitments in DSS and update the plenary with its findings.

Saraki said: “Your committee should please go ahead with the planned investigation on the alleged lopsided recruitment in DSS to right whatever wrongs that must have been committed in the general interest of all Nigerians.”

Details of the recent recruitment by the DSS indicated a spread many Nigerians have described as an aberration to the Principles of Federal Character.

According to reports, the spread of the recruited trainee officers into the Department of State Security DSS shows that a geopolitical distribution as contained follows:

North West-   165, North Central-   71, North East-   100, South West-57, South South 42, South East 44. The total for the Northern states amounts to 336, while the three regions of the South got 143 recruits in total.

In the distribution, Katsina State alone (the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari and DG, DSS) got 51 candidates, in contrast to the entire six states in the South West which got 57 candidates altogether.

The details also show that whereas Katsina got 51 candidates, Lagos state, the second most populous state in Nigeria and the nation’s Commercial Capital got only 7 candidates.

Not a few Nigerians have railed against the development seen as a huge slap on the Federal Character Principle, a Constitutional provision.

It was the first time recruitment into the DSS is facing such uproar and interests but the figures out there call for the inquests.

Incidentally the security agency, now without a visible public affairs office, has not officially reacted to the development. What was pushed out there was an unsigned document, purportedly from the insiders in the agency, which attempted to explain away the troubled recruitment exercise.

The document had claimed that the exercise was done to correct the imbalances of the past, when possibly Southern heads were in charge of the agency.

That would easily raise a number of questions, which could also interest the Senate Committee.

Some of such questions include: What does the existing configuration of DSS look like? What is the correction being effected? Can the DSS publish its organogram to show its ethnic and geopolitical configuration? Was the recruitment exercise undertaken with the involvement of the Federal Character Commission? Was the exercise advertised and well publicized? Who and who were in the panel of decision makers where the slots were allocated and selection of successful candidates made? Is it true that the incumbent Director General of DSS cancelled the recruitment of a set of trainee officers shortly after he assumed office? Does this new one align with the Federal Character Principle? These and many more should agitate the minds of the Senators as they prepare to engage the secret service, perhaps, for the first time, in the open.