A former state director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Sir Mike Ejiofor, says the Nigeria Correctional Services (NSC) had sufficient intelligence on plans by criminal elements to attack critical infrastructure and other public places.
Terrorists with high explosives and other arms, Tuesday, attacked the Kuje Custodial Centre leading to the escape of over 800 inmates.
Prior to the attack, the DSS had issued several warnings about the possible attacks by criminal elements.
The Service in a press statement on April 26, 2022, specifically raised the alarm over the plan to return the country to the pre-2015 era reminiscent of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks on soft and hard targets in parts of the country.
The statement signed by the DSS Public Relations Officer, Dr. Peter Afunanya, also said it had uncovered a plot by suspected criminal gangs to forge an alliance with the objective to launch attacks on critical infrastructure and other public places.
Speaking to journalists on Friday in Abuja, Ejiofor, who is the Chairman/CEO of Safety Security Consultant LTD, said: “The attack is quite disheartening and embarrassing to the entire country.”
According to the former DSS boss, “There were several intelligence. Our problem in Nigeria is not the dearth of intelligence, we have an abundance of intelligence and Nigerians agree that there is sufficient intelligence but the problem and question people are asking are: how were we not able to prevent this?
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“I can tell you, much as I sympathise with the action agencies, they don’t have the capacity to deal with the situation and it’s quite unfortunate. It is not only in security sub-sector but people are worried because security is the primary purpose of government as enshrined in our constitution.”
Asked whose responsibility it was to give the order for action to be taken on intelligence, he said, “Well, I don’t want to go deep but in the intelligence circle, we have four stages, we have the direction, collection, processing, and dissemination.
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“But at our level of inter-agency relationship if the DSS offers intelligence to a particular agency, let’s take for example the correctional service, the DSS goes ahead to back it up with implementation strategies.
“When you recommend such implementation strategies like strengthening the walls, providing cameras in the facility, educating the staff on what to do but the facility does not have the finance to implement all these things who do you blame?
“That is why I said they don’t have the capacity to implement these strategies and it is that obvious. The funds are not sufficient and will never be sufficient.”
Speaking further Ejiofor warned of the likelihood of more attacks stating: “I actually said it is likely to happen because from records available, intelligence available, we are approaching elections and these terrorists don’t believe in democracy so they will want to do anything to thwart the process.
“I am not sounding pessimistic or alarming but I believe that our security agencies should step up their game to check the likely upsurge.”
Continuing he said, “The terrorists are testing waters. The fact remains that these people are very daring and they want to bring government to disrepute and make sure that people lose confidence in government.
“So, if they could go ahead and attack the president’s convoy, even if they knew he wasn’t there, they tried it as a sign to say: we are capable of doing this.”
PoliticsNigeria
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