₦airaland Forum

After months in the limbo, Department of State Services personnel who served as Body Guards to President Goodluck Jonathan have been posted out of the Villa to various state commands.

Competent sources at the Presidential Villa told Weekend Vanguard that the signal for the posting of the over 150 body guards who had remained redundant following the directive by the ADC to President Buhari that they should leave the presidential villa came yesterday.

It would be recalled that following the swearing in of President Buhari, personnel of the Department of State Services who had traditionally served as Body Guards to the president were ordered to leave the Villa on the instructions of the ADC to the president.
According to the source while a few of the DSS personnel were posted to the headquarters of the DSS, most of them were posted to various state commands of the service.

“Almost all of our personnel who were body guards in the villa have been transferred out of the state House. A new crop of body guards who were trained for the purpose have taken over. They will take over from the soldiers who were initially drafted to man the various beats hitherto occupied by the DSS personnel. That phase of transition is over” the source said.

About 250 personnel of the DSS are expected to take over the job of protecting the president from the military personnel.

Weekend Vanguard gathered that the process of bringing in the DSS personnel after those who served president jonathan was withdrawn was necessitated by the bitter experience during the sallah prayers when president Buhari was almost mobbed by enthusiastic Nigerians who overwhelmed the military men that were protecting home.

President Buhari himself confessed that but for God’s protection, he would have been mobbed by the crowd that thronged the Eid prayer ground.
It would be recalled that since their departure from the villa, most of the body guards have been idling away as they had not beat to cover and did not belong to any state command.