Lawyer asks court to stop SSS from using ‘DSS’

By Tobi Adetunji

A Lagos-based lawyer, Tope Alabi, has asked a Federal High Court in Lagos to ban the State Security Service (SSS) from being addressed or addressing itself as ‘Department of State Service (DSS)’ without an amendment of the law.

Alabi also prayed the court to declare that the DSS is not an agency established under any law in Nigeria.

He made the prayers in his August 23, 2021 suit numbered FHC/L/CS/1071/21, with the State Security Service (SSS) and Attorney-General of the Federation as first and second respondents.

He also sought a declaration that the authorised operations of the SSS neither involve arrest and detention of Nigerians without a court order nor involve arrest or extrajudicial killing of a person accused of a crime without trial or conviction by a court.

Alabi, in his August 24 affidavit in support of the suit seen by Nigerian NewsDirect referenced the October 8, 2016, SSS invasion of judges’ homes, August 2, 2019 invasion of Omoyele Sowore’s home and that of the July 2021 raid on the home Sunday Igboho, during which 12 persons were arrested.

He further sought a declaration that the authorized operations of the 1st defendant “do not involve the killing of Nigerians in their private homes at midnight when they are asleep, without a trial and conviction by the competent court in Nigeria and without a death sentence upon which execution may rest.”

In another prayer, he asked the court to determine whether the SSS can invade any state without the knowledge and consent of the sitting governor of such state, among other prayers.

According to him, the SSS had made itself “an agent for dispute settlement and debt recovery among the citizenry” and that its activities had been creating “panic and terror in the society.”

The defendants are yet to file a response and no date has been fixed for hearing of the suit.