Reports of plans to alter recruitment laws of the Office of the National Security Adviser, (ONSA), has sparked worries among stakeholders within the security and intelligence community in Abuja, it was gathered, late Friday.

As also learnt, representations to President Bola Tinubu, including signed open letters, one of which the newspaper is in custody of, has been made, calling the president’s attention to the ill-advisedness of the plan.

From details gathered, a bill was recently sent by members of President Tinubu’s cabinet to the National Assembly, NASS, with the aim to tinker with recruitment provisions of ONSA.

Planned as an executive and when passed into law, it will change the provision that established the office of the ONSA and allow the National Security Adviser, NSA, to recruit and establish its own staff similar to existing government agencies and parastatals like the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, (ICPC) and others.

But in one of the open letters from Non-Staff Actors Consultative Forum, NOSACOF, signed by Abdulrazaq Alkali, Forum Convener, critical issues bordering on unwieldiness of the process, potential to cause disaffection and needless rivalry with other security agencies and cost implications were raised.

“This has the potential of creating many overlaps in the functions of these agencies and 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 staff and collaborations from the various security agencies, such that the agencies do not see the office of the NSA as a rival agency,” NASCOF convener said.

Recently, President Tinubu had cause to effect leadership change at the EFCC, moving leadership of the commission to the South for the first time. But this only came after a similar open letter was made to Tinubu on the lopsidedness of recruitment and promotion in EFCC over the years.

Even more, complaints were also made that the recruitment laws that allowed the commission to make its own choice of recruitment allowed for the lopsidedness.

Nuhu Ribadu, current NSA, headed EFCC when the recruitment laws were made. There are, however, no indications that Ribadu is behind the planned ONSA Bill.

By the current law setting up ONSA, recruitment practice is that the NSA can obtain trained and experienced personnel from the security agencies; that is, staff who are already trained and experienced to fill into national security roles.

“Thus, restructuring the office of the NSA into an agency and allowing it to recruit its own staff at present will very much reduce the efficiency in the operations of the office of the NSA.

“This is because the office of the NSA will not be able to fill the roles with candidates of the desired expertise and specialty; it will end up spending years, may be decades, and billions of Naira to train these staff to the desired level of competency and the other security agencies will be reluctant to share staff with the NSA as they will feel they are no longer stakeholders in the office of NSA,” explained NASCOF in their missive to the president.

According to Alkali, the move can only be self-serving. (Text, excluding headline: Saturday Independent)

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