The gaping failure in our security architecture was revisited on Tuesday last week during the two-day colloquium on the Nigerian Communications Act, NCA, 2003, titled: “22 years after, Reassessing the Nigerian Communications Act – Challenges, Opportunities and Future Directions for a Digital Nigeria”, at the Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos.

Some Members of the House of Representatives saw it as an opportunity to take the telecommunications services providers to task over their perceived failure to curb the epidemic of kidnappings and other forms of insecurity.

Ben Etanabene (Okpe, Sapele and Uvwie, Delta State); Ayodele Festus (Ile Oluji, Ondo State) and Moshood Olawale (Lagos Mainland, Lagos State) wondered why the “telcos” could not rein in the kidnapping scourge in spite of their serial tariff increases. Etanabene, a former kidnap victim, accused the telcos and the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, of failure to provide geo-location services to ensure the arrest of the criminals and terrorists.

Representatives of the telecom providers properly schooled them on the fact that their job is to provide services to their customers. Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, simply and correctly told the lawmakers: “In the first instance, we are clearly telecom service providers and do not have the mandate to run around arresting criminals…the security agencies have not come to ask for geolocation of events and we refused giving it out”.

It is unfortunate that the kind of lawmakers we have these days and other occupiers of lofty public offices no longer seem to know where to put square and round pegs.

During the Muhammadu Buhari regime, the rising wave of kidnappings, Boko Haram, bandit and herdsmen terrorism were partly blamed on lack of a unified database to enable the law enforcement agencies track criminal activities using digital technology. The telecom operators – MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9 Mobile – were forced to re-register their customers with new SIM cards.

Also, the NCC compelled the Nigerian Identity Management Commission, NIMC, to register and issue National Identity Numbers, NINs, to all eligible Nigerians, while the banks were made to compulsorily issue Bank Verification Numbers, BVNs, to their customers.

After all these, the security agencies, for reasons yet to be explained to the public, simply refused to use them, as the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy at that time, Ali Pantami, has disclosed.

The telcos, banks, NIMC and security agencies are supposed to work together to effectively implement the use of digital technology to tackle insecurity, criminality and terrorism. The security agencies – Police, Armed Forces, Directorate of State Services and others – are to lead while the providers follow. They are simply not doing that enough or at all. Some even collude with the criminals. Nobody seems to care.

We must put the blame where it rightly belongs.