The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has linked poor intelligence gathering by the Department of State Service, DSS, for the bombings that killed about 20 people in Abuja last week. The party’s acting national chairman, Uche Secondus, in a statement on Monday, said it was the reason “for the resurgence of terrorists, who had earlier been pushed to the precipices in the Sambisa Forest in Borno State”.
“From all indications, the DSS under the watch of the current Director-General, Alhaji Lawal Daura, does not seem to be in full grip of the intelligence situation”, he stated. The party also slammed the DSS director-general, Lawal Daura, for politicising the activities of the service.
“In the last few months, the DSS, instead of concentrating on its primary statutory duties of providing domestic intelligence, security service and criminal investigations for the state, has, under the new Director-General, directed all its energies on political matters; chasing after opposition elements, interfering in election tribunal activities, intimidating and hounding tribunal witnesses while terrorists resurge and combatant security forces left with scanty intelligence.
“The situation with the DSS has become so pathetic that it could not even effectively analyse reported suspicious tweets ‘predicting the attacks’ as a clue to forestall last Friday’s attack in Abuja and other parts of the country”, the statement added. Secondus urged President Muhammadu Buhari to overhaul the service and other security outfits in the country, while promising the PDP’s support for the government’s anti-corruption war.
“We are aware that a bomb is an ill wind that blows no good to anybody in the community. It scares away potential investors,” he noted.
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