Nigeria: DSS Can’t Afford Frivolity

 By Amanze Obi

The other day, the Department of State Services (DSS) had cause to talk tough. It said through a press statement that there was a plot by some Nigerians for the installation of an interim government at the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure on May 29. The service said it has uncovered those behind the burgeoning scheme. It frowned seriously on the plot and warned those behind it to retrace their steps.

The reaction from the DSS was predictable. It was its immediate response to the petition brought before it by one of the defenders of Bola Tinubu’s contentious election victory, Festus Keyamo. The Tinubu apologist had alleged that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 election, Mr. Peter Obi, and his running mate, Festus Keyamo were promoting insurrection and civil disobedience. Keyamo asked the DSS to arrest them and charge them for incitement and treasonable felony.

Nigerians of goodwill have since chided Keyamo for his infantilism. But they did not need to preach to the DSS to ignore Keyamo and his antics because they believe that the service is professional enough to differentiate between a self-serving deprecation such as Keyamo’s and a well-intentioned alert on domestic threat. Strangely, however, the service took more than a passing interest in the hoax. It stepped forward, most uncharacteristically, to address Nigerians on a security issue.

But what is the substance of the matter for which the service is subverting its standard operational procedure? There is the claim, which the DSS said it has confirmed, that some Nigerians are working to ensure that Bola Tinubu is not sworn in on May 29 as the President of Nigeria. Those who are against Tinubu’s inauguration have their reasons. They believe, and very strongly too, that Tinubu did not win the February 25 presidential election.

The victory ascribed to him by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is further tainted by the argument that whoever must emerge as President must, in addition to the general requirements, score at least one quarter of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Tinubu fell short of this constitutional requirement. It is, therefore, being strongly argued that swearing him in will be unconstitutional and illegal.

These are some of the issues before Nigerians over the May 29 inauguration. Nigerians as free citizens are ventilating their views on the matter. For some, it will be better to have a stop-gap arrangement represented by an interim government than to engage in outright illegality and unconstitutionality. This is what some people are saying, even if it does not sound welcome to some other people. The debate can go on. In whatever way it will be resolved will be a function of the pronouncement of the courts or the disposition of the Presidency (in the absence of a judicial pronouncement) whose duty it is to determine the way the transition programme will go. It is not a matter for the intervention of the DSS.

Regrettably, the service, by its action, has engaged in scare-mongering. It has imbued what is supposed to be a creative discourse on nation-building with bile and pugnaciousness. As a secret service, the DSS ought to deal with issues arising from the calls for an interim government surreptitiously. Since it said it had identified those behind the plot (that is if the idea qualifies for a plot), what makes sense is for it to take whatever action it deems fit without assaulting the sensibilities of the larger Nigerian publics. 

But by going public with its position on the matter, the service has only succeeded in playing to the gallery. It can be accused, rightly, of trying to arm-twist Nigerians into toeing its own line. This open show of bias is frivolous and very unbecoming of an otherwise respected agency of government. The service may do well to let Nigerians exercise their right to free speech.

Those who want to whip Nigerians into forced silence must be reminded of the great hopes that the people had about the presidential election of February 25. It was one election that promised to be a watershed in Nigeria’s march to an enduring democratic order. But we are all living witnesses to how it was brazenly thwarted by the electoral commission led by Mahmood Yakubu. The outcome of the election was disappointing. It was so because the process was compromised. It fell far short of the people’s expectations. 

Nigerians and the world at large are united in their condemnation of the electoral theft that was visited on the country. The brigandage was so bizarre that the election has come to be described and underlined as the worst ever in Nigeria’s history. A situation as bad as this will certainly elicit mixed and strident reactions from those concerned. That is what Nigerians are doing. They are responding, one way or the other, to the disappointing turn of events. Seeking to cow or harass them into accepting this aberration is even a worse aberration.

Nigerians must continue to interrogate the outcome of the February 25 presidential election until a workable pathway is charted out of the quandary. The DSS must not force dumbness, inaction or resignation to the aberration on the people.

*Dr. Obi is a commentator on public issues