By Oluwaseyi Oduyela
Nigeria’s national security system needs a reset. For too long, the country has built its security architecture around personalities rather than institutions. Everything depends on who occupies the office, not on the strength of the framework itself. That is why coordination collapses the moment the players change.
The National Security Adviser (NSA) is supposed to be the link among Nigeria’s security and intelligence agencies, yet the office operates more as a presidential aide than as the head of a coherent national security structure. Without a formal legal framework and institutional authority, coordination often gives way to competition. Agencies work in silos, duplicate efforts, and sometimes withhold intelligence from one another.
The United States offers a useful contrast. The National Security Agency (NSA) handles signals intelligence and cybersecurity, while the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) oversees all intelligence agencies and ensures unified direction. Each has a defined role, backed by law and structure. That is what gives the U.S. system its stability and clarity, regardless of who is in office.
Nigeria can learn from this. The country needs a Director of National Intelligence to provide strategic oversight and coordination across agencies, and a National Security Agency dedicated to signals intelligence, cyber defense, and data protection. This would allow the DSS, NIA, and DIA to focus on their mandates within a harmonized system that promotes collaboration instead of rivalry.
Security should never depend on the strength of individual personalities. It should rest on systems that outlive them. Nigeria’s security challenges are too complex for fragmented efforts or turf wars. The nation must move toward a professional intelligence community built on structure, accountability, and cooperation.
If Nigeria truly wants lasting stability, it must stop governing through personalities and start building institutions. People come and go. Only institutions can secure a nation.
Oluwaseyi Oduyela lives in United States of America.
