Origins
The NSO was created as a fall-out of the Dimka coup. Prior to the coup, internal security and intelligence was handled by the police Special Branch, a secret police, while external intelligence was conducted by the Research Department (RD), a unit of the External Affairs ministry. The Special Branch had failed to obtain intelligence about the coup and the coup plotters before the coup was executed; the Inspector General of police at the time MD Yussuf excused this failure as the inability of the Special Branch to police the military. The police simply lacked the legal backing to conduct intelligence operations on the military. At the time, there were rumours making the rounds alleging that a former head of state Gen. Yakubu Gowon had planned the coup form his hideout in exile. Gowon had been ousted in a bloodless coup led by the late Murtala Mohammed while he was in Uganda attending a meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and had taken up temporary asylum in Togo as at the time of the coup. The ringleader of the coup plotters was Lieutenant colonel Buka Suka Dimka, an in-law of Gowon and fellow member of the Angas ethnic group in Plateau State. Dimka had visited Gowon in exile in the UK and under interrogation claimed to have received Gowon's blessing for the coup; Gowon denied ever discussing the coup with him. The rumours of Gowon's involvement though unsubstantiated might have eroded whatever confidence the executive had in the RD as an external intelligence agency.
The new Head of State, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, created the NSO by merging the Special Branch with the RD and appointed colonel Abdullahi Mohammed a former Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) as its first Director General. The new NSO set up offices in the 19 states of the federation and had its headquarters in the state house annex in Lagos. The agency later moved into its permanent headquarters office space at 15, Awolowo road, Ikoyi, Lagos. This address also later served as the first headquarters of the successor to the NSO, the State Security Service. The most recent occupant of this same address is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
Read more about this topic: National Security Organization
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