By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Like most other appointments in his 11 months
in the job, only President Muhammadu Buhari knows
why he pulled out his kinsman, Lawal Daura, from retirement and
handed him the sensitive and strategic job of director general of
the Directorate of State Securities (DSS).
That
was in July 2015, barely one month after he was sworn in as president on May 29.
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| *Lawal Daura |
For
a president who has confessed his love for working with those he knows and who,
despite all the positions he has held in the country – including being military
head of state for 20 months – his circle of friends is limited to his Fulani
kinsmen, Daura may well be his idea of the man who the cap fits after he sacked
Ita Ekpeyong who headed the agency from September 2010 to July 2015.
Established under the National Security Agencies Act of 1986 (Decree 19) the
DSS, also known as the State Security Service (SSS) – one of the three
successor organisations to the National Security Organisation (NSO) dissolved
in 1986 – is the primary domestic intelligence agency of Nigeria.
Before
the DSS, there was the NSO, set up in 1976 with Abdullahi Mohammed as the first
director general.
But
the NSO under Mohammed Lawal Rafindadi was broken up into three agencies by
former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, after it had been turned into a
monster used to abuse Nigerians and trample upon their fundamental human rights
by the Buhari-led military junta between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985.
In
appointing Daura the DG of a critical security apparatus such as the DSS, it
would seem that Buhari’s primary goal, aside consolidating power in the hands
of his Fulani brethren, is to recreate the stomach-churning 20th century secret
police used by his military junta to whip people into line in a 21st century
democratic environment.
