Muntaka outlines plan to redefine national security coordination

Government is seeking to clarify roles within the country’s security architecture as part of reforms captured in the Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025.

Addressing Parliament, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka said the changes are aimed at preventing overlap between the National Security Coordinator and a designated Minister for National Security.

“A detailed ministerial role and the function of the national security coordinator, because he’s supposed to coordinate all the activities within the space,” he said.

He warned that maintaining a Ministry of National Security with extensive authority could create tension within the system.

“If you assign or leave a ministry called Ministry of National Security that likely is supposed to play an oversight role, and if you are not careful, they begin to conflate, and they begin to have misunderstandings, and that affects the security architecture that we have in the country,” he explained.

Muntaka added that the proposal would position the coordinator closer to the President, while oversight responsibilities would be exercised through a minister without an overly detailed designation, to avoid institutional conflict.

“So one of the things that we are trying to do is to keep this position as more or less of that of the President, and then he gets one of his ministers to play that oversight,” he said.