While giving the 2025 Distinguished Personality Lecture at the University of Ilorin’s Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies in Kwara State, Ajayi made this appeal.
Ajayi underlined in his talk, “The Roles of the DSS in Security, Peacekeeping, and National Integration,” the necessity of a paradigm change in security agency hiring and staffing practices to guarantee that only the brightest brains are hired.
The DG, who was represented by Mr. Patrick Ikenweiwe, the Deputy Director of the DSS, contended that, like Israel’s elite university admissions system, the DSS should make it mandatory for the country to hire top academic performance.
“Like I know, in Israel, there is one examination that students take to get admitted into the university. The moment you score above 70 marks, you have no option but to be sent to the university there.”
Since many Nigerians see security agencies as enemies rather than allies, the DSS DG emphasised the need for a change in public opinion.
“Tell me how would a ‘Dundee’ (dullard) be able to keep security in a criminal gang that is constituted of First Class people? You know, it takes intellect to track criminality.”
“So, if I have my way in this country, and we keep praying that we do the right thing, the academia should be able to supply us, sincerely, the details of students who have excelled in their various fields of study so that they would be forced to serve this great nation,” he said.
He cautioned that such viewpoints had a detrimental effect on national integration, peacebuilding, and intelligence collection.
He argued that to combat complex criminal networks, intelligence work demands extraordinary intelligence.
The talk also emphasised how important intelligence services are to maintaining national security and how intelligence collection and peacebuilding are hampered when the public views security agencies as enemies rather than allies.
Speaking on Nigeria’s security environment, Ikenweiwe pointed out that increasingly complicated issues including terrorism, insurgency, separatist agitations, militancy, cybercrime, and economic sabotage have replaced more conventional threats like sabotage, subversion, and espionage.
“The former summarily mandates the Service to prevent and detect any crime against the internal security of Nigeria as well as protect non-military classified national security matters, while the latter, promulgated by Abdulsalami Abubakar, mandates the service to, among others, prevent, detect and investigate the threat of espionage, subversion, sabotage, terrorism, separatist agitation, law and order and economic crimes of national security dimension.
“The instrument also demands that the DSS gives timely advice to the government on all matters of national security interest. Most importantly, the Service is empowered by the aforementioned legal frameworks to execute other functions as may from time to time be assigned by Mr. President, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
“The centre also offers short-time capacity-building training in those areas. Quite a number of officers from the Nigeria Armed Forces, other security agencies as well as officers of other nations have benefitted from the programmes, graduated and are doing well in their callings,” he said.
He reiterated the DSS’s dedication to addressing these risks by means of ongoing stakeholder engagement and strategic partnerships with sister agencies. He gave a summary of the DSS’s mandate, stating that SSS Instrument No. 1 of 1999 and the NSA Act CAP N74 LFN, 2024 both address the service’s internal security obligations.
In a related event, First Lady Oluremi Tinubu hosted a DSS delegation at the State House in Abuja on Wednesday. The team was led by Mrs. Afolashade Adekayaoja, the Deputy Director-General.
The visit demonstrated the administration’s dedication to advancing women into positions of leadership in the security industry. Tinubu praised the DSS for assigning a woman to such a prominent position, saying, “Women who have demonstrated their abilities in their careers deserve leadership roles and recognition.”
This demonstrates my husband’s long-held conviction that women are incredibly dedicated and responsible. In order to motivate future generations, she asked female leaders in the DSS to stand by one another and carry out their responsibilities with diligence.
Adekayaoja responded by thanking the administration for its efforts to promote gender inclusivity and restating the DSS’s commitment to maintaining stability and national security. The DSS hopes to increase its operational effectiveness in addressing changing security threats and bolstering national peace and integration by pushing for the mandatory recruitment of Nigeria’s most talented individuals into intelligence services.
CREDIT: ALLSCHOOL, Allschoolabs
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