Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has explained why he appointed Samuel Aruwan, a journalist, as the state’s first Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs and removed internal security management from the office of Secretary to the State Government.
Aruwan, who is a former Bureau Chief of Leadership and Blueprint newspapers in Kaduna, was El-Rufai’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity during his first tenure.
But he was appointed in 2019 by Governor El-Rufai as the first Security Commissioner after the governor created Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs.
El-Rufai, while addressing security officials at the opening of a quarterly zonal meeting of Directors of Department of State Services, said he appointed Aruwan because of his energy as a young man and the large number of informants he had in his contact as a journalist.
The governor said, “I picked a journalist to do this job. I did so not because he is a journalist but because I had seen in our first term of office, the energy he has, the number of informants he has across the state.
“I am sure the energy that he has brought into his job, the support that he has given to the security agencies, including supplementing human intelligence on the ground on the activities of criminals is well appreciated by all our security agencies.”
The governor further explained that he removed security from SSG’s office because, “In our first term of office, security management was under the Office of the Secretary to the State Government. This is the structure in most states of the federation, but we found that the Secretary to the State Government is extremely busy. Permanent Secretaries reporting to him and not enough attention is being given to the security management.”