Nigeria: Between The Media and The DSS

Nigeria: Between The Media and The DSS

By: James Bwala

Last week, the Nigerian Union of Journalists in the Federal capital cautioned the Department of State Security, DSS over its continuous dappling into areas of conflict alien to its jurisdiction. This was following the invitation of the NUJ Officials to the Department over a case said to have been reported to the DSS by some faceless individuals.  

A statement by the NUJ FCT Chairman, Mr. Emmanuel Ogbeche reads: “We are not unaware of efforts by some faceless individuals masquerading as members of the union, to cause disaffection in the NUJ FCT Council. It is a shame that the DSS will yield itself to such obnoxious tactics. If the Service was focused on national security, it will not dabble into matters that it should have done due diligence on.

“To begin to ask NUJ FCT Council officials to validate what are outright falsehoods and subject them to psychological and physical trauma is unfortunate and regrettable.

“If the Service were that diligent, it should have known that the Chairman of Council, Emmanuel Ogbeche, graduated from the University of Calabar, and did his National Youth Service in Lafia, Nasarawa state. Besides, the possession of the same is not necessarily a prerequisite in running for office in the NUJ when there are other qualifications in that regard.

“Also, it is a wonder that the DSS has now taken on the functions of anti-corruption agencies over a lease that was sanctioned by the Congress of the Union.

“The idea of trying to cow the Union and its officials from performing their constitutional roles of holding government and its officials accountable as well as weakening citizens’ rights to hold and air their opinions, is undemocratic and an infringement on constitutionally guaranteed rights,” 

I observed recently the growing distance being created between the DSS and the Media. I thought the best complimented organization in terms of exchange of information for the DSS should be the Media and the best friend to watch the back of the Media should be the DSS. Perhaps this is my opinion. However, one thing I know is that the DSS is an organization sustained on information and the Media a body of organized data collectors and information dissemination.

The Media plays a key role in the success of not only organization but society and a nation. But why would an organization like the DSS try to become unfriendly to the media? I have heard from a lot of colleagues recently expressing bitterness with the men in black especially at the place of assignment. This is becoming a trend and the government of Nigeria particularly had to come in before things began to fall apart.

It is rather very dangerous for a nation to have a media that is silent from within and loud outside its borders. The society from time immemorial depends on the media in the building and development of a better and stronger nation. Where the media is absent, the nation has failed because a nation without information is but totally blind. So the media plays a great role in Nations building however anyone may think otherwise.

The issues of harassment or trying to cow media practitioners especially in Nigeria is not new. But this trend is taking a dangerous position. It was just like a case of the drunken man who would in his drunkenness feel the wife at home is nothing but a trash he can be manhandled at any given time while in that state where he feels she is weak, and weaker vessels can be tossed around anyhow.

But when he awakes out of the spirit that holds his thought processes at the time he feels on top of the situation and realizes that the woman he has been punching left, that is when he becomes sober and begins to need help in order to have her back. Such maybe the story between the Nigerian security Operatives and the Media on a general scale, however while the other security agencies are coming to terms with the importance of the media in their operations, the DSS is feeling or assuming a self-reliant in its operations forgetting the facts that one wrong move would put the whole organization at the mercy of the media.

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Mr. Emmanuel Ogbeche, the Chairman of the FCT Nigerian Union Journalists might have put the words through. And I expected and hoped the Department of State Security Services; DSS has taken note of those lines in the Press Statement by the NUJ in Dec. 7, 2021. Recently, I had had a discussion with a Police Officer, who complained that the DSS has taken the Police work such as what the NUJ in its statement is trying to draw the attention of the Department State Security to in respect of some civil cases, which may not have been part of the working documents of the department of state security. It may not be only the police that have or are nursing such grudges and that is why the department must make every effort to build relationships because no tree makes a forest as they say it does.

Harassment of media officials or trying to cow journalists is a worse case that can happen to a nation. Journalists have both social responsibility and national interest at heart when discharging their responsibilities. However, this trend now taking the space of collaborative working relationships may be a virus that both the Media and the DSS would have to look at to make adjustments and accord each other the respect deserved.

Intimidating to cow the Media is not an achievement rather it is a shame and degrading to the department of state security. There are many places and occasions where these have taken place. They stop journalists from exposing activities of government officials and political office holders, which are the constitutional rights of the media in holding public officials to account with reference to public trust. 

The question I asked is that has the DSS turned into a witch-hunting dog or tools for aiding misdoings and for covering wrongdoers holding public office? I asked this question because as a Journalist, in 2007, we were invited to the DSS office in Maiduguri to explain why we wrote stories about sharing of Ramadan rice and Sugar to certain individuals who the government had claimed to have shared such items to but the individuals denying put the government running from pillar to pole. They however decided the Department of State Security, DSS to withdraw our stories and apologies over facts that we have written. But the truth stood tall no matter the intimidation.

Secondly, we were again invited in 2010 to defend a report we published about a lawyer’s son, who was alleged to have taken part in attacking a family under the guise of Boko Haram at the height of the insurgency in Maiduguri. The Lawyer, who reported to the DSS unfortunately, did not clean his tracks. We went and we came out clean given the DSS more information to work with. The end was almost an embarrassment to the Department of State Security.

Recently, I learnt of a case in Yobe state where a permanent secretary allegedly reported a journalist to the department of state security over a report the said journalist was investigating and preparing to send for publication. It was learnt that he was cowed into dropping the story, which has to do with some misdeed in the ministry. These are few cases to mention as many media practitioners have their own stories and references.

But when did the DSS leave so many documents needing attention on national security as captured by Ogbeche to attend to issues of social accidents or to become tools in the hands of public office holders and politicians? The Department of State Security is the last service I thought still holds some integrity and public respect. I prayed they would not by any chance. 

The DSS still needs the public’s trust. The organization needs to concentrate on weightier matters of national security and stop being used in matters outside its purview. I believe they needed the media most to achieve those trust. The media is the closest to the public and the public in the context we lived in understands the media better. There is this synergy and trust that is strong between the media and the public.

The Media remains part of the society where the public finds it easy to trust and confide in to give needed information that continuously grease the wheel of security operations in this country. The Media remains the data collectors and no project is complete with data. For the DSS to gather informed literature for their daily working and arriving at every intelligent decision that keeps the oil of their performance they also need the media to sustain peace and unity of the nation. 

Nigeria: Between The Media and The DSS