SSS moves to secure personnel records

SSS Spokeperson, Ms Merilyn Ogar

Indications emerged yesterday that the Department of State Security Service (SSS) had started processes of securing its records following the publication of records of some of its personnel by suspected members of the militant Islamist sect, Boko Haram.

Records of former and current members of the Service, including home addresses and names of immediate family members of over 60 past and current employees, were allegedly published with death threat messages in a report by the Associated Press.

However, spokesperson of the SSS, Ms. Marilyn Ogar, Deputy Director, Media and Publicity, in a telephone chat with our correspondent, said the Service was unaware of the “purported internet publication,” and wondered why the AP waited after a week that the report was published and removed to make it known.

Ogar said it could be part of the wider plans to smear the effort of the Service and appealed to Nigerians to be wary of such reports.

The publication which also had information on the SSS Director General, Ita Ekpeyong, including his mobile phone number, bank account particulars and contact information for his son, were said to have been available on the Internet for days.

The security breach, Blueprint checks revealed, has reinforced the widely held impression that the intelligence community were at a loss over how to confront the security challenges in the country.

This has also reinforced the perception that members of the sect may have infiltrated the security agencies with access to firsthand information on personnel and strategy, making it even more difficult to resolve the current insecurity.

A senior security personnel, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, expressed disbelief that the safety of security personnel could be so easily compromised even as he acknowledged that efforts were on to prevent further compromise of security personnel not only also in the SSS but other sister agencies.