By Emmanuel Elebeke & Nnamdi Ojiego

CHIEF Executive of the Teledom Group, Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem has thrown his weight behind the clamour for SIM card registration in the country, saying it will greatly enhance the use of ICT tools by law enforcement agents to check crimes in the society.

Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, CEO, Teledom Group: Telecom growth has been consumptive

He said ICT has made it possible to monitor human activities right from birth to death, a situation which has made it difficult for criminals to hide under the circumstance. He also said that the much talked about growth recorded in the ICT sector is nothing but a consumptive growth with little value added to the economy.

Dr Ekuwem spoke on the “ Use of Information and Communications Technology for National (Homeland) Security Operations”, during the 2010 Nigeria ICT Platform held at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, recently. He explained that from cradle to grave, people’s activities can be monitored and assembled from scattered or distributed sources. According to him, this was possible because every human activity leaves a trace.

Ekuwem who was also a former president of ATCON said, if the biometrics of every citizen is captured and stored in the  National Identity Database, criminals could be monitored and their nefarious activities exposed, adding that since nobody would want to be identified as a criminal, crimes would drastically reduce in the country. He added that with ICT, electoral malpractices like multiple thumb-printing and ballot stuffing would be a thing of past as the Direct Data Capture (DDC) machine is capable of detecting multiple voting if properly used.

On SIM card registration, Dr Ekuwem said the telecom industry cannot wait for the Nigerian Identity Management Commission, NIMC before it would start registering phone users. According to him, there is need to match every active SIM card in the telecom industry uniquely to an owner, which can be a human being or a company.

“Central Identity Database is required to eliminate submission of fraudulent bio-data by card registration. However, while the central National Identity database is being developed, telecom service providers can start with operator-specific databases. It will be useful  for law enforcement and will drastically reduce the use mobile phones to send threat text messages, and make threat calls, among others.”

He however, stressed the need for the development of National Identity Management Database, which should serve as a reference database for voters register, voters at every election, national security monitoring, surveillance, identification and arrest of criminals. The Teledom MD also called for establishment of a National Security Grand SNOC with integrated downstream Master SNOC, Mini SNOC  and Micro SNOC to ensure national security surveillance, monitoring, tracking, isolation and arrest of criminals.

Ekuwem has described the growth recorded in the telecom industry as consumptive which breeds joblessness and corruption in the land.
“What we have had is not a productive growth but consumptive growth. We import almost everything we use in the industry. Because of corruption, the country prefers importation and with importation, you can’t create jobs and grow the economy.

“If you made one million naira via hard work, you would have created a lot of jobs. Government officials do not patronize indigenous companies. They prefer to spend tax payers money in foreign countries in the name of importations”, he stated stressing that unless the root causes of insecurity like corruption in the high places, poverty, joblessness, ostensious lifestyle of public officer among others are tackled, crimes would not abate in the country.

Speaking on the theme “Sim Card Registration and Effective Data Capturing Mechanism in Promoting National Security”, the Head, Corporate Planning and Strategy, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC,   Abdullahi Maikano, noted that the non existence of accurate register for the over 80 million telecom subscribers in Nigeria has raised a national security concerns, saying that Nigerian must begin to adopt a proactive step to ensure a comprehensive register of both the existing and new subscribers and must be in line with the global trends and best practices.

Maikano said that the industry had in the last nine years witnessed  unprecedented growth in the telecommunications sector, from 500,000, throughout the nation in 2001 to 80 Million teledensity in Nigeria as at August, 2010. With these surge, he disclosed that the globally mobile phones is  expected to  hit 5.3 billion by the end of the year. On why access should taken to every corner of the country, the NCC Director said communications are now easy and accessible to the both rich and poor as so should be taken to both urban and rural areas

He described technology as a two-edged  sword: thus transforming the way people live and make business while criminals are  also exploiting it to commit fraud, robbery, kidnapping among other crimes.  This he stated has been a source of great concern to  government, the Security Community and the entire law abiding citizens.

He however assured on the ability and commitment of  the NCC to ensure a reliable and sustainable Sim registration exercise within the shortest time. This according to him will enable security agencies access to information during investigations.

To him, in the absence of any identity infrastructure to support the program a model that best suits our situation must be developed. Under the framework for registration of Sims,  he said telecom operating companies are expected to  register all New SIM Cards at the point of purchase while NCC will register the existing SIM cards. All these will be matched  by the NCC at the Central database of subscribers for all the different networks to be created.