By Suleiman A. Suleiman

Nigeria’s security and intelligence agencies – Army, Navy, Air Force, police, Department of State Services (DSS), and National Intelligence Agency (NIA) – are all struggling to have a grasp of their place, their identity, within our ongoing democratic system. They all had an assured past in the stable dictatorship of the colonialists or military era (in the case of DSS and NIA).

But now, nearly a quarter century into democratic government, they are all unable to reinvent themselves to properly suit the demands of a system based on accountability. The doctrine, training, and the political behaviour of these agencies have scarcely changed from the originals that were forged under colonial or military dictatorships.

Some, like the Prisons Service and the DSS, have had a change of name but hardly any change in mind, attitude or behaviour. To grasp this fully, we need to look in the direction of their use of force, and in their relationship with each other and to the state.

As I write, nearly all guns in the Nigerian Army’s armoury are pointed, not at any external enemies, but at Nigerians right here on Nigerian soil, all in the name of fighting one or other forms of so-called “non-state actors”. The Nigerian Navy knows about only one job now: fighting local oil thieves and bunkerers. The Air Force regularly rains down fire on citizens at will, without as much as an apology, or even admission it happened, however unintentionally. Not even during military government were our soldiers this much involved in civil life as they are today. “Insecurity” alone cannot explain this. As for the rest, like the police and the DSS, as well as the so-called “para-military” forces that do not normally bear arms, their disrespect for the lives and limbs of Nigerians is better imagined.

Where our security forces are not snarling down at Nigerians for the purposes of control rather than protection, they are busy barking at each other in rather trivial turf battles, or doing the political bidding of the men and women in power at the moment. Who can count the number of times soldiers, policemen and DSS operatives have engaged in open skirmishes against one another, sometimes involving the exchange of gunfire and death of personnel? Nor can we count how many times the police, DSS and even soldiers have been deployed directly or indirectly to do political battles on behalf of presidents, governors, or others. And this is not to mention the countless times one agency would usurp the functions of the another, just to stay in the good books of power or to curry favours at its feet.