Presidency Administers Oath of Secrecy

The Presidency has administered an oath of secrecy on 37 staff members, urging them not to divulge classified information to the public else face sanction.

The ceremony took place, Tuesday at the State House Auditorium, Abuja and Justice Hamzat Muazu of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, High Court, performed the ceremony.

The Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijjani Umar, while giving the charge, warned that the Presidency would not accept any breach of the oath taken of secrecy by the staff. He added that if any gives out information without authorization is a grievous offence.

“This exercise is the beginning of doing what is right in various offices,” Umar said. “The rules must be enforced and any breach carries a consequence. From now on, you are under the radar, we are going to watch and follow you.”

Speaking further, the permanent secretary said: “What we have done today is to administer the oath of secrecy on the staff of the State House, who handled classified documents.

“When we say classified documents, they are secret and other documents that ought not to be handled without due diligence. So, I think it’s so important because we are alarmed by the fact that nowadays, due to deployment of staff and through retirement, we discovered that a number of our officers need to be placed under the radar.

“They will be aware that the jobs that they are holding, and the kind of documents or information they are keeping from day to day, Monday to Friday and beyond, those documents are so essential and must be safeguarded.

“The the breach of such documents would take away from the delivery of service, and that was the reason why we decided that we should do the needful by administering the oath of secrecy and highlighting the import of letting them know what information they are managing, and then the consequences of the breach of such information.

“I think when you let people know, and then along the way, you find them wanting, the consequences are very clear.

“And so before we even went forward to do the administration of the oath, what we did was to do a sensitization training for them, so that the Official Secret Act will be spelt out to them very clearly.

“And the Special Services Office of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation was here today to take them through all the rudiments of that information that they require, and the type of knowledge that they would need to keep close to them in discharging their day-to-day responsibilities.”