14th September, 2011
 Retired Colonel Gabriel Adetunji Ajayi, former Commanding Officer of 123 Infantry Battalion, Maiduguri; Officer in charge of Administration and the Quatermaster-General, Lagos Garrison Command, Nigerian Army and author, End of The Road For An Infantry Officer, spoke to ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE and FOLARIN ADEMOSU on the failure of intelligence in Nigeria
For their inability to foil the spate of bombings and other security breaches in Nigeria, can we say the security intelligence services have failed?
My view on the failure of intelligence gathering and its application to the security challenges in the country is the failure of Nigeria as a whole. It is not institutional. There is no way any department of such nation will not be affected by the general malaise that has been the lot of the country. The fact is that we are always quick to pick some isolated issues to declare that they have failed in their job.
Have we really laid a solid foundation for effective intelligence? Rather, we blame the boys for security lapses. The Nigerian factor has terribly undermined effective and efficient security intelligence in the country.
What are these areas of the Nigerian factor that have undermined the nation’s security?
There are many forms of the Nigerian factor that have undermined security in the country, such as nepotism, greed, selfishness, our leaders playing the deity, extreme poverty and extreme wealth. In such a situation, people turn to self help if they can not get what they want.
I served in Maiduguri during my military service and knew that there had always been one form of rabble rousing or another. I was a commanding officer of 123 Infantry Battalion and anytime a VIP, say, the head of state, was visiting the state, I would send my unit’s chief imam with kolanuts to meet some of these chaps to forestall any likely problem.
Are you saying the Boko Haram had always existed there?
They were not known as Boko Haram at the time. The point is that there had always been rabble rousing in that place for many years, but they were hardly known to the world. Their operations were now known, particularly because of the revolution in communication and the world becoming a global village. The difference is that the level of their hostility to the nation was not as serious as it is now.
When the Maitasine emerged then, we crushed them with an iron fist, without finding out what gave rise to them. The Almajiri in the North is one of the problems that have been left unchecked. It is different in the southern part of the country because people value education to an extent. But I can tell you that the situation will become uncontrollable when our own Boko Haram springs up.
How?
If you go out on the streets of Lagos, you will find youths who should be gainfully employed collecting tolls from okada riders. Also, in Ibadan, young people of school age are rather selling Aboniki balm on the road. In my town, Ilesa, Osun State, there are more okada riders than farmers! Farming has been abandoned. There will be a time when okada riding will no longer provide these people with the means of livelihood, yet they must survive.
The National Security Organisation, NSO, was instituted because the Nigeria Police failed to detect the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup that led to the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed. The NSO was also abolished after the overthrow of the Buhari/Idiagbon regime. The NSO was then accused of some excesses in their operations and, therefore, abolished. After this, the State Security Service, SSS, was created. It was not until General Ibrahim Babangida came to power that the SSS was founded and some other security arrangements created, like the National Intelligence Agency, Defence Intelligence Agency and the Directorate for Military Intelligence that is meant for tactics and military intelligence operations.
The problem with these security agencies is overlap in the performance of their duties. The essence of intelligence is to get information about a likely security breach and foil it before it happens. But it is no longer intelligence, if the deed is committed before the security agencies act.
Be that as it may, credit should be given to those working there now, because they have stopped many likely security breaches from taking place. So, security intelligence must be proactive and pre-emptive. In spite of high-powered security arrangements by the United States, they still failed to prevent the 9/11 attack from taking place. That singular occurrence obliterated the successes the US had made over the years. The people behind Boko Haram are Nigerians and even if they are not, they are blacks. Nigeria is the most populated black nation in the world and naturally, other blacks around the world ought to be attracted to us.
One other problem is the porousness of our borders. There is no way anybody can secure our borders because Nigerians have their kith and kin in those neighbouring countries we share borders with. This is caused by the arbitrary carving of African borders by the imperialist powers at the Berlin Conference.
Also, there are many people who believe in the message of Boko Haram but do not subscribe to their strategy and tactics. Just like the Niger Delta militants, there are many people who believe in their cause but did not subscribe to their violent campaigns or strategy.
Beyond the Nigerian factor, what was wrong with the security apparatus in relation to the recent bombings?
There is a clear failure of intelligence gathering in the Nigeria security arrangement because they ought to have made effective assessment of the situation after the bombing of the Police Headquarters in Abuja. They ought to expect that after the Boko Haram took on a high profile target like the Police headquarters, they would want to aim higher and sustain the tempo.
In a situation where we have an insurgency, what is expected of the government is to devise means of counter-insurgency. They needed to have sat and put themselves in the position of the insurgents to understand what they may likely be aiming at. They should know that having aimed at a place like the Police Headquarters, the Boko Haram would want to draw international attention to themselves by aiming at bigger targets.
So the intelligence units ought to have secured these places well ahead of the possible attacks.
Everyone is guilty of security breaches. People see unusual things and just go past them. They simply do not care. Some even say if they call the attention of the police to it, the police automatically turn the informant into a suspect or culprit. All these are the Nigerian factors that have undermined our security intelligence.
How can the Nigerian factor be corrected?
It is important that we re-invent and restructure this nation. Everyone must have a sense of belonging in Nigeria for us to achieve nationhood. There needs to be a re-orientation and a sense of belonging by everyone. The Internal Affairs Minister recently said, ‘Nigerians do not love to die,’ ‘Nigerians love to go to parties.’ He was blaming foreigners for the attacks and massacre. I was shocked about his assessment of Nigeria. How can we conclude that foreigners are behind the attacks, when fundamental issues about the country and its people have not been resolved?
Why are people not sympathetic to the cause of the nation? How do I send an Igbo or Yoruba man to Borno as an undercover agent without the people discovering he is an undercover agent? He will soon be found out because they just will not consider him as part of their society. And for this Igbo or Yoruba or Kanuri man to even accept to go and do what he is supposed to do efficiently will require genuine nationalism, which is lacking. It is nationalism that will make a Tiv or Ijaw man turn in his brother to face the law if he commits a crime.
The SSS said they just discovered a bomb manufacturing company, but the question I asked is: Are those bomb factories just established in those places, why are they just discovering them and not about a year ago? It means that something is wrong.
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