By Ahmed Rufa’i, Dutse
Non State Actors Consultative Forum (NOSACOF), a non governmental organization has kicked against the said proposed bill to be sent to the national assembly for the establishment and recruitment of a new security outfit under the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA).
This was contained in a press statement issued, signed and made available to our reporter in Dutse by the forum’s convener, Comrade Abdurrazaq Alkali, the group called on President Tinubu to be conscious of the alleged effort by some politicians and people in his government trying into certain structural and constitutional changes to some government institutions that may create confusion.
According to the statement “Mr President Sir, the present push for a bill by some members of your government to make the National Assembly change the provision that establish the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and allow the NSA to establish and recruits own staffs similar to an existing government agencies and parastatals is an ill informed and can set a very bad precedence”.
The statement stated further that “concealing the fact that the true intention and motive for such move is about their personal and political interest”.
Comrade Alkali added that “First and foremost, passing this bill will mean that the overall office of the NSA infrastructure will have to be overhauled to avoid conflict with the section of the constitution that establish it or the section of the constitution will have to be changed to accommodate the bill provision”.
The forum in the statement expressed fair that “this has the potential of creating many overlaps in the functions of some already existing intelligence agencies such as National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Department of State Service (DSS) etc with the same vision and mission, aims and objectives will further widen disunity, rivalry and lack of synergy between the various security agencies”.
“Presently the NSA has been the fulcrum of maintaining and enforcing co-operation between the security agencies, and one key component of its success is due to the fact that it derives staffs and collaborations from the various security agencies, such that the agencies do not see the office of the NSA as a rival agency”, the group emphasis.
“Thus, restructuring the office of the NSA into an agency and allowing it to recruit its own staffs at present will very much reduce the efficiency in the operations of the office of the NSA”.
The statement maintained that “This is because the office of the NSA will not be able to fill the roles with candidates of the desired expertise and speciality, it will end of spending years (may be decades) and billions of Naira to train these staffs to the desired level of competency in the other hand security agencies may be reluctant to share staffs with the NSA as they will feel they are no longer relevance in the office of NSA. With the current security and financial challenges bedeviling this country, this is definitely a wrong move and a wrong timing as well”.
Also noted that the office of the NSA is known to be one of the only offices that work with highly professional and skilled staffs extracted from the various security agencies mainly based on merit, skills and capacity.
“Mr President, the onus of making the right decisions about our country rest on your shoulders and I am confident that you will not allow such dubious bill to be pushed through using your name and or support”.
The convener therefore commended president Bola Ahmed Tinibu on his proactive measure in some policies implementation and institutional restructuring in order to salvage the future of this country.
Comrade Abdurrazaq Alkali, said “since the coming of president Bola Ahmed Tinibu’s administration, it is quite clear to all Nigerians that it will not be business as usual”.
