Government is seeking to rename the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) as the Bureau of National Intelligence (BNI), as part of the proposed reforms in the Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025.
This, the Minister of the Interior, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, explains is due to the confusion that comes with the NIB acronym which many mistaken for the National Investment Bank.
Addressing Members on the floor of Parliament on Thursday, February 19, 2026, the Minister argued that the overlap undermines clarity within the country’s security framework and runs counter to global practice.
“Everywhere in the world, you make sure that the acronyms for the security agencies do not match any other thing, and in fact, it is supported by law to make sure that nobody is able to name anything after an acronym of any of the security agencies,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we have a situation where, when you say NIB, people are wondering whether you’re talking about the bank or you’re talking about the security agency. So Mister Speaker, one of the significant things that we are trying to do is to reintroduce the name BNI at this time, even though the BNI of yesterday was Bureau of National Investigation, this BNI will still remain Bureau of National Intelligence.”
Beyond the renaming, the Bill also intends to eliminate the Minister of National Security portfolio, as part of the broader institutional adjustments aimed at restructuring the country’s security architecture.
The President will be empowered to designate a Minister to exercise an oversight responsibility over the National Security Coordinator, instead of creating a standalone ministry for it.
The rationale, Mr. Muntaka explained, is to prevent the operational friction and role duplication within the security space.
“…A detailed ministerial role and the function of the national security coordinator, because he’s supposed to coordinate all the activities within the space. And 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.
“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 without the necessarily fine, detailed designation of a minister for national security, so that as much as possible you try to avoid the conflict between the minister and the National Security Coordinator”.
However, the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has mounted strong opposition to the Bill, cautioning that it risks concentrating excessive authority in the hands of the National Security Coordinator.
He questioned the necessity of the reforms, arguing that the memorandum accompanying the Bill fails to demonstrate shortcomings in the existing legal framework.
He said: “The memorandum before us does not provide any empirical evidence to suggest that ACT 1030 has failed. It appears that this bill is more founded on partisan political interest than a national security interest for good governance.
“What is being proposed? So much power is being given to the coordinator, it is not clear how his powers are going to be fettered and Mister Speaker. My submission is that if you give such powers to the coordinator, and you do not provide for a clear path of responsibility, accountability and oversight, it becomes problematic to you yourself as a government, and when the rights of citizens are being abused, the man will come and tell you that in the name of national security. There will be the need for the Minister to sit with us as a House, do further winnowing and incorporate the major concerns raised by the Minority on this floor.”
New Security Bill flawed, centralises excessive power in Presidency – Minority
