ADEOLA AJAYI AND THE QUIET REINVENTION OF NIGERIA’S INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

How the DSS DG is changing the security-media conversation and why Nigeria must take the story to Africa

By Ikechukwu Chimdi Christopher

For decades, the relationship between Nigeria’s intelligence community and the media has been defined by suspicion. Security agencies have viewed journalists as potential conduits for sensitive information, while journalists have often seen the security establishment as an institution too willing to invoke national security to restrict legitimate scrutiny. It is a difficult relationship, but in a democracy, it is one that must be managed with maturity. Something, however, appears to be changing. At the centre of that change is the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi.

Since assuming office in August 2024, Ajayi has increasingly projected a different philosophy of intelligence leadership; one built around professional engagement, preventive intelligence, community participation, institutional accountability and a more constructive relationship with the media. The significance of this emerging approach goes beyond the personality of the man leading the DSS. If sustained, it could mark the gradual development of a new intelligence culture in Nigeria.

The first indication of institutional change is often not a new building, weapon or intelligence platform. Sometimes, it is language. Under Ajayi, the DSS has increasingly spoken the language of partnership. The Director-General has repeatedly maintained that journalists should not be treated as criminals simply for performing legitimate professional duties and has committed the Service to creating a more conducive environment for the media.

That change in tone has attracted remarkable recognition. The International Press Institute recognised Ajayi for championing press freedom, while the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria honoured him as a Friend of the Media. The Nigeria Union of Journalists has now named him its Man of the Year for 2026. These are significant laurels, but the awards themselves are not the story. They are evidence of a wider story already unfolding around the DSS.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has also publicly endorsed the direction. After Ajayi received the IPI recognition, the President commended the DSS chief for changing the narrative of hostility towards the press and urged other security agencies to engage the media as partners rather than adversaries. That presidential endorsement effectively elevated the Ajayi approach from a personal leadership style to an example of what the administration believes the relationship between security institutions and the media should become.

But the transformation goes beyond public statements. Ajayi has increasingly emphasised intelligence-led and preventive approaches to security, alongside stronger community engagement and cooperation with other stakeholders. He has argued that communities must become part of the country’s security architecture because security agencies cannot be everywhere. For an intelligence institution, that is a particularly important philosophy. Information does not exist only inside government offices; it lives among communities, traditional institutions, businesses, civil society organisations, journalists and ordinary citizens. An intelligence service that commands fear may obtain information. An intelligence service that commands trust can obtain better information.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of institutional maturity, however, is what happens when a security agency gets it wrong. Intelligence is imperfect. Sources can fail. Operational decisions can have unintended consequences. The real test of an institution is therefore not whether mistakes occur, but how it responds when those mistakes are established.

Under Ajayi, the DSS has released and compensated individuals subsequently found to have been wrongly detained. In separate cases, people cleared of allegations linking them to banditry or terrorism were released and compensated. The Service has also approved compensation for others found to have been wrongfully detained. These actions may appear modest against the enormous scale of Nigeria’s security challenges, but they carry a powerful democratic message: national security does not cancel individual rights, and an intelligence institution can be powerful without placing itself above accountability.

That principle deserves to travel beyond the DSS. The Nigeria Police Force, the military and other agencies exercising coercive state power must continually review their procedures, strengthen internal oversight and ensure that citizens do not bear the permanent consequences of institutional mistakes. Accountability does not weaken security institutions. Properly applied, it strengthens their legitimacy.

Nowhere is the emerging Ajayi philosophy more consequential than in the relationship with the media. The old model has often been adversarial. The journalist asks, What are they hiding? The security officer asks, What are they going to publish? The journalist sees secrecy; the security officer sees operational risk. Both concerns can be legitimate, but both can also become dangerous when they harden into permanent distrust.

The answer cannot be to silence either institution. It must be professional partnership.

That was the significance of the National Security Summit jointly organised by the NUJ and the DSS, bringing journalists, security and intelligence chiefs, policymakers, academics, civil society actors and other stakeholders together to discuss the relationship between security and responsible journalism. The message was clear: Nigeria’s security challenges cannot be effectively confronted by government alone, just as the media cannot fulfil its watchdog responsibility without credible information and constructive engagement with the institutions responsible for national security.

But partnership must never mean surrender.

The media must remain independent. It must investigate government, question security agencies, expose wrongdoing and hold power accountable. At the same time, independence must not be confused with hostility. A responsible media should understand that unverified intelligence, sensational reporting and premature disclosure of sensitive operational information can endanger lives, compromise investigations and inadvertently strengthen criminal or terrorist narratives.

The Nigerian media therefore needs a mature institutional relationship with the DSS, one that preserves its watchdog responsibility while recognising that both institutions ultimately serve the same public. The journalist needs credible information. The intelligence officer needs responsible journalism. The citizen needs both.

There is, however, a bigger challenge before Ajayi.

Nigeria must begin to tell this story beyond Nigeria.

If the country is genuinely witnessing a change in the relationship between its intelligence community and the press, the continent should know about it. For too long, Nigeria’s international press-freedom narrative has often been shaped by individual incidents involving arrests, restrictions, intimidation or disputes between journalists and state agencies. Those incidents must never be ignored. But neither should evidence of institutional improvement be ignored.

Ajayi should therefore consider taking the emerging DSS model to the continental level. The Service should engage African media organisations, press-freedom institutions, journalism unions, civil society groups and relevant African Union platforms. Credible continental actors should be invited to examine the reforms, engage the DSS leadership and assess the changing media-security relationship in Nigeria.

This should not be propaganda. It should be evidence.

If journalists are being treated differently, Africa should see the evidence. If wrongly detained citizens are being released and compensated, the continent should know. If erring officers are being disciplined, that should be documented. And where shortcomings remain, they should be acknowledged and corrected. That is how credibility is built.

This continental dimension is important because Nigeria is too consequential to Africa for its institutional experiences to remain an exclusively domestic conversation. Nigeria is Africa’s largest democracy and one of its most influential media environments. What happens here inevitably influences how democratic institutions across the continent are perceived.

When Nigeria’s security institutions are accused of violating press freedom, the implications extend beyond Abuja. But when Nigeria demonstrates that a powerful intelligence service can operate with firmness while respecting democratic accountability, that too sends a message across Africa.

This is where Ajayi’s leadership presents an opportunity. He should seek not merely another award, but a credible continental endorsement of the emerging transformation at the DSS — particularly its evolving relationship with the media. African media institutions and press-freedom bodies should be encouraged to engage directly with the Service and examine the evidence for themselves. If the dynamics are genuinely changing, that change should begin to reflect in continental conversations, assessments and editorial verdicts on Nigeria’s press-freedom record.

Nigeria should not simply complain when its international image is unfavourable. It should provide the evidence necessary to change the narrative.

There is also a larger political significance to Ajayi’s tenure. President Tinubu’s administration has repeatedly spoken about institutional reform, professional security operations and strengthening democratic institutions. The DSS under Ajayi has provided one of the administration’s most visible examples of how those aspirations can translate into institutional behaviour. His recognition by the IPI, BON and NUJ reinforces the impression that something different is happening in the relationship between the Service and the media.

But the real test is not how many awards Ajayi receives.

It is whether the philosophy survives him.

Will engagement with journalists become standard institutional practice? Will mechanisms for resolving disputes become stronger? Will wrongful actions continue to attract consequences? Will citizens continue to have avenues for redress? Will intelligence operations remain anchored in the law? And will the next generation of intelligence officers inherit a culture that sees the media not as an enemy, but as a legitimate institution within Nigeria’s democratic ecosystem?

Those are the questions that will determine Ajayi’s ultimate legacy.

For now, however, there is a compelling story unfolding inside Nigeria’s intelligence community. It is the story of an institution attempting to reconcile two ideas that were once treated as opposites: strength and accountability.

The DSS remains a security institution. It must be discreet, firm and capable of protecting Nigeria from serious threats. But secrecy must not become impunity, and national security must not become a blanket justification for denying citizens their rights.

What Adeola Ajayi appears to be demonstrating is that an intelligence agency can be strong without being hostile, discreet without being inaccessible, patriotic without being partisan and powerful without placing itself above the law.

That is the kind of intelligence community a democracy needs.

The awards may be the visible laurels of the moment, but the larger achievement will be whether the new culture becomes institutional, whether the media recognises partnership as part of its national responsibility, and whether Africa begins to see Nigeria’s security-media relationship through a more complete and evidence-based lens.

That is the real opportunity before Adeola Ajayi — not simply to change the DSS, but to change the conversation about what an African intelligence institution can be in a modern democracy.