Partnership for Public Safety and National Security : Lessons for Exploring the Benefits of Interagency Collaboration and Community Nigeria’s Security Agencies

Abstract

This paper attempts an evaluative analysis of the need for a focused and productive collaboration of the intelligence and security agencies in Nigeria with the needed community linkage in ways that the community’s security and safety can be guaranteed. The mutations of national security threats in Nigeria and the sophistication of the tactics of extremist and malevolent elements in the country have equally necessitated the urgent need to vigorously strengthen inter agency collaboration in the business of intelligence and security management. All over the world, massive intelligence failures have been predicated on poor inter agency collaboration arising from lack of mutual trust, institutional egotism and perhaps fatal ethno-religious loyalty. In Nigeria, the recent cases of intelligence failures and the monumental national security threats posed by extremists remain to a large extent due to poor/weak inter agency collaboration and apparent community isolation. The paper therefore examines how the intelligence and security agencies can collaborate and adequately integrate the community to guarantee the security and safety of the nation.