LAST Tuesday, tomfoolery in full technicolour was on display at an event — a 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.” The event held at the Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos. That spectacular show of tomfoolery is another indication that managers of public affairs, firmly ensconced in their comfort zones at the taxpayers’ expense, continually lack the cognitive wherewithal to think through issues affecting the polity and proffer sustainable solutions.

Some members of the House of Representatives opted to use the occasion to take telecommunications services providers to task over the epidemic of kidnappings and other forms of insecurity ravaging the country. Specifically, 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 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. 

I was not only aghast, but ashamed that people who use the prefix of “Honourable” before their names could so dishonourably betray such shallow intellect. These law-makers simply came to Lagos at our expense from Abuja to bark up the wrong tree. If this is the kind of thinking that informs policy formulation and law-making, then Nigerians and Nigeria will remain mired in the murky waters of underdevelopment for as long as it takes to rejig cognition. Pray, when did it become the duty of MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9Mobile to rein in criminals?

We’ve been on the drive, as a nation, to generate a database of users of telecommunications services since the Jonathan presidency. Then, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, under the leadership of Dr. Eugene Juwah ordered telcos to conduct a KYC (Know Your Customer). Me, you, the reader and all other Nigerians were stampeded to register our SIM cards, and we all mostly did. Then the National Identity Management Commission ordered that all phone lines be linked with National Identification Numbers, NIN.

This is in addition to the banks being directed to issue identification numbers, which we all have now come to know as BVN to all bank customers. NIMC was not done yet; it directed all of us to get our National Identification Number and link them with our phone numbers and bank accounts. Not a few Nigerians suffered great privations as a result of the NIN-SIM-BVN linkages. As things stand today, there are very few services, if any at all that one can be availed of without NIN, including opening a bank account or registering as a voter with INEC.

To what end? We were all told that once all these data are available security agencies will be able to use them optimally to track felons and nip criminal activities in the bud. But what has been our experience? People continue to get kidnapped, even as the kidnappers demand for and get ransom. In not a few cases, kidnappers got ransom and still killed their victims. Instead of thinking through all these and identifying gaps in security services delivery, some “honourables” decided just to prey on the telcos. 

Truth is the information needed to optimise security services delivery is available; loads of it. But is the information being used? Are the security agencies using the information? Is the information easily and readily accessible to the officers and the rank and file? Even without the NIN-SIM-BVN information, there is a lot that the security agencies can do to get information about criminals and their location.

A kidnapper that called the family of his victim did so from somewhere. With the level of technology available for free, we shouldn’t be suffering the way we are. Almost without exception, all states have geographic information systems. This means that the land area in their territories have been captured and the data stored somewhere. With something as rudimentary as Google Earth application, available for free in the app stores of most phone makers, it should be easy to track and determine the location of kidnappers.

Call identification applications are also available for free, which, in addition to providing information on the identity of callers also give locations. Why are the security agencies not using these simple things? Why do I even bother? Does the police station in my neighbourhood have a cyber squad? In a situation where many policemen in the country still use phones of the type we call “palasa”, how can they be availed of information that a smart phone can be used to access?  Clearly, we have a long distance to cover on this matter of insecurity and I think our legislators and policy makers should at least think issues through, identify gaps and needs, and make laws to address them. That will be better than barking up wrong trees as was done at that Lagos colloquium.

Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, gave it to them: “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 geo-location of events and we refused giving it out”.

The way forward is to create a framework whereby NIN, SIM, BVN and KYC data captured so far can be available at the click of a button to the security agencies and their men. Already, most Nigerians are on one database or the other. Most children are on JAMB, NECO, WAEC databases. Most adults will be on FRSC, Immigration, or bank databases. What is needed is to harmonise them all for the use of our security agencies for the good of us all, and that is what the law-makers should be worrying about. TGIF.