The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to either re-jig the legislative framework setting up the Department of States Services (DSS) to make it more responsive to the growing trends of crimes and criminality or compel it to focus on eradicating threats to the stability and security of Nigeria.

HURIWA lamented that rather than focusing on security issues that are confronting the nation, such as terrorism, kidnapping for ransom and armed attacks of communities by armed freelance hoodlums, the undercover police is fixated with arresting and detaining civil society activists, media practitioners and political opponents of the President.

The rights group said its call is against the backdrop of recent unfortunate forceful kidnappings and killings of many Nigerians, including operatives of the Nigeria Police and the DSS by dare-devil armed kidnappers and terrorists, especially in the North-west of Nigeria.

In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA stated that it does not make any sense that the DSS, funded by taxpayers in a constitutional democracy, is being used by the President to scuttle the enjoyment and the exercise of the constitutional freedoms which is threatening to turn Nigeria into a police state or Fascism.

It noted: “The increasing challenges of breakdown of law and order across the country demands immediate, comprehensive, radical reforms of all segments of the armed security services, with special attention to the DSS which is increasingly losing focus and is gaining notoriety as the anti-democratic armed security agency whose mandate is to cripple the expansion of enjoyment of fundamental freedom by the citizens.”

HURIWA said a perusal of the establishment Act setting up the State Security Service, popularly called Department of States Services (DSS), has shown that the agency ought not to create the public notoriety as the agents of anti-democratic forces whereas it is established to eradicate such heinous crimes that threaten the security and stability of Nigeria.

The rights group stressed that the activities of terrorists, armed bandits, armed Fulani herdsmen, and sundry other armed freelance hoodlums, constitute a grave threat to the survival of Nigeria, “because millions of Nigerians are now living in fear and apprehension just as the public confidence and trust on the capacity of the present Federal Government to secure lives and property of Nigerians has waned rapidly.

This, HURIWA averred, demands some fundamental reforms of the operational strategies of all relevant armed security agencies that the ways and manner the DSS operates is not in tandem with the Establishment Act that set it up.

The group noted recent activities of the secret police, known as state security service or DSS, in which perceived opponents of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) President have been arrested and arbitrarily detained are some of the diversionary illegalities that are weakening the operational fabric and focus of the DSS to such a negative dimension that even the operatives are becoming endangered species, having become targets of kidnappings and killings too.

HURIWA said: “We, as committed patriots, are hereby calling on President Buhari and the National Assembly to reorganise the DSS and give them more central law enforcement mandates to complement the Nigerian Police to jointly operate like the way the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are working in the United States to stamp out and confront armed and violent criminals.

“This urgent task of reforming the DSS should be embraced as a national rescue mission because, it is indeed embarrassing that officers of DSS, Federal Road Safety Commission and the Civil Defence have all fallen victims of the activities of kidnappers. We suggest that rather than the DSS divert its statutory function to only that of crushing civil rights activists and perceived political opponents of Presidents in office, which is unconstitutional, it should be refocused to work in a similar form like the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigations. So it can jointly work with the police to crackdown on the widening wave of armed kidnappings and to go after armed bandits and armed Fulani herdsmen, so as to restore national security and national stability.”

HURIWA recalled the recent incidence of a 33-year-old operative of the DSS, Sadiq Bindawa, who was reportedly murdered by suspected kidnappers in Katsina State after they had collected N5 million ransom from his friends and relatives.

HURIWA recalled that the Security Agencies Act (1986) was designed to disband the then Nigerian Security Organisation and to create three security agencies, charging each with the conduct of the relevant aspects of national security and other related matters.

HURIWA noted that under the Establishment Act, the DSS/SSS should not be misused as an agency to pursue political witch-hunt and continuous clampdown on perceived opponents of President Buhari, and applying brute force to muzzle the Exercise of the fundamental human rights of citizens enshrined in Chapter 4 of the Constitution and a plethora of other global human rights laws.