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Just pause for a moment and reflect on the following scenario. You are an editor and a journalist, and in the course of your career, have published a number of articles or news items that have rankled the government, past and present. Then all of a sudden you received an invitation to deliver a lecture at an elite institution inhabited by some of the brightest among the security and intelligence services of the country.
Just when you were suspicious as to whether this was a trap to get you cheaply, your proposed hosts added another dimension to the mix by advising you to take up accommodation for one night within its confines, with the reason that they are located off, and, if you sleep in town, you could be late for the paper you are billed to deliver the following morning. An editor sleeping for a night in an institution initially set up by the Department of State Services (DSS)!! Is that an indirect detention or what? Well, these are the natural thoughts that would flow through your mind as this scenario unfolded.
But this was not some form of fiction. It was a real-life story and I was in the midst of it almost three months ago, specifically on October 27, 2021, at the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS), located in the serene Lower Usuma Dam part of Abuja. Just when I was confused as to what to do regarding this situation, I consulted with a few colleagues, and all of them reminded me that a very solid friend of the media, Dr. Peter Afunanya, was the spokesman of the DSS. They suggested I contact him to establish my safety or otherwise as to such a ‘strange’ offer. And I did so immediately.
Dr. Afunanya is the go-to man for media personnel having issues with the DSS or seeking explanation about its operations, which, by law, are mostly shrouded in secrecy. Last year when my son was kidnapped, it was Afunanya that I contacted, and he in turn informed his boss, Mr. Yusuf Magaji Bichi, the Director-General of the DSS. In just a day, the service was able to crack what seemed like an impossible case, and my son was returned to me without me having to pay a dime in ransom. Of course, the Nigerian Army and the police have also played some key roles in that direction. But the DSS resolved it in a way that was magical. At times, one would not know how effective our security organisations can be until one is somehow involved with them. I published details of this shortly after the incident in April of last year.
It turned out that my fear was misplaced. The impression that the DSS and other security and intelligence organisations are decidedly enemies of the media and its personnel are misplaced. In large parts, I came to realize that it was all a carry-over of the deep animosity that existed between the media and the DSS during military dictatorships, when it was used in clamping down on the media and in intimidation of its personnel for practically no cogent reason.
The DSS of today, though a human organisation prone to making mistakes, is a totally different setup altogether. It is now more civil. Of course, there are still personnel in its ranks that could be crude in their approach, but these are being handled gradually by the effective leadership the service now boasts of. Dr Afunanya is a one-man battalion, a patriot who styles himself as a disciple of Yusuf Bichi, the DSS boss. I am not aware whether the DSS has a human rights desk. But I know for sure that Afunanya engages in an intricate balancing act, being friends with the media, the civil society and probably the general public, as well as serving the nation’s best interest, as far as national security is concerned.
Back to the NISS. I was allocated a chalet and a butler, a very nice gentleman named Yusuf. It turned out to be a totally harmless experience that has enriched my knowledge as to how friendly these security personnel we tend to fear can be. It was within this serene environment that I finetuned the paper that I was billed to present in a few hours’ time. I was somehow intimidated because the paper was part of the module, or grading of participants of the National Institute. The subject was COVID-19 and the media: the Nigerian experience. I ended up producing almost eight thousand words and over two hundred PowerPoint slides, chronicling the experience of the media, especially during the national lockdown last year.
When Mr. A.S. Adeleke, the very hardworking commandant of the NISS, learnt that I had settled down, he came to greet me in my chalet, after which he drove me to the cafeteria for lunch. Adeleke is a Fellow of the Security Institute and also a member of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies. He turned out to be a thoroughly decent and warm person, one of the very best I have ever been privileged to interact with.
The next morning, October 28, was D-Day. While waiting to be ushered to the lecture hall, I received yet another surprise. The person sent to moderate the session and lead me to the hall was no less a person than my old friend, Deputy Commissioner of Police Baba Mohammed. Years back, when I served as special adviser to then Governor Shekarau of Kano State, Baba was the spokesman of the Kano State Command of the Nigeria Police Force. Like Afunanya, Baba was also so excellent at his job that he enjoyed the confidence of media men as well as the government of the time and indeed the good people of Kano State. I had not seen him in a long time, and never knew he was a participant of the Course 14 of the NISS. Not surprisingly, he moderated the session very well, chaired by the Deputy Commandant and Director of Studies of the Security Institute.
At the end of my presentation that took one and half hours, participants and distinguished academics that the NISS was lucky to have as faculty members asked me very difficult questions, including one about whether the media can shield the truth in the interest of national security. I told the participants that when I was a title editor of one of the prominent national newspapers, I would always receive calls from top security personnel, asking me to downplay the number of casualties during some attacks by enemies of the nation. This was a white lie, whose significance lies in the fact that terrorists and other criminal groups thrive in publicity.
When they kill one hundred people and it is published as such, they celebrate the feat and get more emboldened. And their getting emboldened translates to big trouble for all of us.
This hard truth did not fully dawn on me until Boko Haram struck in Abuja in 2014 and killed Suleiman Bisallah, one of my best friends and colleagues, who at that time was the managing editor of the New Telegraph newspaper. It was from that moment that I reached the conclusion that we in the media have no option than being friends with the security personnel working day and night, staking their precious lives to see that you and me stay in peace.
Of course other climes that I know, including America’s media, has a strategic relationship with the security services that encourages the media to make sacrifices in the interest of national security. At the level of the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers that I belong to, national security has always been a hot topic of discussion especially during our annual conferences, and the consensus has always been that the media has two clear choices: pleasing the terrorists by sensationalizing their dastardly activities and advance our commercial interests, or safeguarding the nation by taking sides with the security services, even if some of the personnel are not all-together honest and sincere in their dealings with the media.
Last Saturday, these same participants that I was privileged to present a paper to, graduated from the NISS and were inducted as Fellows of the National Security Institute, a very major personal accomplishment for each of them. As I watched on television Vice President Osibanjo making an excellent remark on the occasion, I could not but become nostalgic about the friends I made among the participants, some of who will in future take over the security apparatus of this country. Though it was never my job to do so, I always remind them about the imperatives of synergy as perhaps the best means to forge a united bond that will be too strong for the enemies of the nation to break.
Though the NISS was set up by the DSS in 1999, it was upgraded in 2008 and has since metamorphosed to the foremost security training institute in Africa that prepares high-level security intelligence professionals, as well as senior level managers for critical roles in the sustainance of national security. It received its premier status in 2019, and is now at par with the National Institute in Kuru, near Jos. The main objective informing the establishment of the NISS is to provide intellectual depth and deepen the capacity of top security personnel to deal efficiently and effectively with deep analytical insight into the development and utilization of available resources towards effective management of the complex security challenges in a democratic dispensation.
And just as I always advice the participants, it turned out that the overriding consideration in the establishment of the NISS includes promotion of synergy among security agencies in the management of national security challenges.
BRASS TACKS congratulates Course 14 participants of the NISS, including those of them that came from different African countries, and wish them the best, as they take up bigger roles in the respective organisations they work in. I also congratulate Mr. Bichi, the very hardworking boss of the DSS, for his excellent leadership that has seen to the DSS providing deep resources for the NISS, as well as providing strategic partnership with it, all in the interest of our national and African regional security.
