Gov. Nasir El-Rufai has said that tackling insecurity requires the cooperation of all states and for security managers as well as intelligence agencies to share information.
The governor gave the advice during the 2021 second quarter meeting of Directors of the Directorate of State Security (DSS) in North West states, on Thursday in Kaduna.
“Any plan that seeks to address the problem in only one state will at best yield a temporary respite as the criminals will retreat to safe havens.
‘’The security agencies need to strengthen intelligence gathering, to establish not just the identities, plans and locations of these criminals, but to actively disrupt their capacity to organise and mount attacks on our citizens.
‘’But it is also very important to ensure that prompt and coordinated action becomes the default response of the Armed Forces and the Police to the profusion of actionable intelligence that is already available,’’ he added.
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El-Rufai said that the governors of the North West and Niger state appreciated the salient fact of inter-state cooperation as far back as 2015.
‘’They came together to fund simultaneous operations by the federal military and security agencies across the largely ungoverned Kamuku-Kuyambana forest swathes that straddle about seven of our states up to Dajin Rugu.
‘’These operations disrupted the cattle rustling gangs, but were unfortunately not sustained as a continuous exercise to dominate these spaces and assert within them the authority of the Nigerian state,’’ he recalled.
According to the governor, the criminal gangs have become more daring and dangerous since recovering from their near defeat in 2015.
‘’As the lead agency for domestic intelligence and counter-intelligence, the DSS has a vital role to play in providing the reliable information needed by the Police and Armed Forces for the total defeat of these dangerous insurgents,’’ he added.
El Rufai warned of looming food crisis in the country, because ‘’ farmers in various communities are unable to go to their farms, that is when they are lucky not to have fled their remote villages under pressure from the criminals.’’
Earlier, the DSS Director in Kaduna State, Mr Idris Ahmed-Koya, commended Kaduna State Government for its support to the command.
‘’The current efforts by the state government to establish a drone centre for intelligence gathering and support of other security operations is highly commendable.’’
According to him, the centre will be a game changer in tackling insecurity not only in Kaduna state but the North-west and even North-central zones when it becomes operational.
‘’Similarly, all our successful operations are made possible and easy through the requisite working tools provided by the State Government. The IMSI Grabber is one of such tools,’’ he disclosed.
Ahmed-Koya, however, appealed to the governor to provide the command with operational vehicles to help in carrying out operations.(NAN)