Nigeria, April 27 -- Somewhere in Nigeria today, a market is open because an arms shipment was intercepted last week. A village is quieter because a bandit kingpin is in a courtroom. A child went to school this Monday morning in the South-East for the first time in years without fear. These things happened not by accident, but because of decisions made, intelligence gathered, and operations executed by an agency that most Nigerians rarely think about, until they have a reason to.

The State Security Services does not hold press conferences to celebrate its wins. It does not trend on social media when a terror cell is dismantled or when a truck carrying 164,000 rounds of live ammunition is stopped before it reaches its destination. Its ope...