Nigeria: We've Seized 676 Guns, Over 330,000 Rounds of Ammunition - DSS DG

What the report says

The Director-General of Nigeria’s Department of State Services, Oluwatosin Ajayi, said the agency is pushing for stronger law enforcement and tougher punishment for terrorists, arguing that intelligence work alone cannot end violent crime. Speaking in Abuja during a briefing with senior editors to mark his second year in office, he said the DSS is now focusing more on securing convictions than simply arresting suspects.

According to the Daily Trust report distributed by AllAfrica, Ajayi said the service had made progress through better cooperation with other agencies, prosecutions and internal reforms. He said the DSS had secured seven death sentences in terrorism-related cases and prison terms ranging from 20 to 40 years in other cases. He also said the agency had intercepted or recovered 676 firearms and 332,874 rounds of ammunition between May 2023 and August 2026.

Ajayi urged authorities to avoid politicizing crime and said offenders should be treated under the law regardless of ethnicity or religion. He also said Nigeria’s terrain, porous borders and weak governance in remote areas continue to complicate security operations, and he expressed support for proposals such as state police and forest guards.

The DSS chief also described compensation for people wrongly affected by its operations, saying the service had paid more than N300 million in such cases. He added that the agency wants to protect journalists and reduce the use of civil disputes as grounds for arrest, while calling on the media to avoid amplifying militant propaganda.