FOR  most Nigerians, the new driver’s license and vehicle registration number scheme is nothing but a ploy to skim more money out of the pockets of hapless citizens for government officials to embezzle.

Now that the scheme has taken off fully with the new number plates everywhere for us to appreciate, that impression has not waned a bit as people often wonder what the difference really is between the old number plates and the new ones beyond the fact that the later are a little larger, with the three letters indicating the city or town of registration brought forward before the number and the Nigerian map emblazoned on it.

One often hears people complaining that those changes are not worth the trouble and the cost that the Federal Road Safety Commission is imposing on Nigerians. This reasoning is widespread and betrays the typical Nigerian attitude of judging a book by its cover or, more precisely, hasty and over-generalisation.

It is really not true that the fallacy of over-generalisation is peculiar to Nigerians; it is just that we as a people have always given in to it and allowed it an unfettered reign in our national life to our own detriment. A few examples will suffice here. In 2005, the Senate commenced a process to amend the constitution. Then along the line the monster of tenure enlongation/third term crept in. By the time the Bill for the amendment came before the National Assembly for debate it had been taken over by anti-third term sentiments; the third term clause contained in the Bill was generalised to represent the entire Bill. It suddenly became the ‘third term Bill’, not even the lawmakers who should know better were able to rise above this fallacy; and so the Bill was shot down with all the other clauses designed to amend various sections of the constitution years ago . Today, we are back to the same spot where we were five years ago trying to amend sections of the constitution.

A similar scenario played itself out during the recent fuel subsidy removal strike. Of all the gains of fuel subsidy removal enumerated by the administration, only one- that it will free up funds for government – stuck indelibly to the minds of most Nigerians. This led to the generalisation that the whole scheme was all about raising more money for government, which will invariably end up in the pockets or personal bank accounts of its top officials. The most prominent gain of the subsidy removal – stimulation of private investments in the refining sector – was conveniently down played or forgotten.

This is exactly what is happening to the FRSC new driver’s license and numbering scheme, many people only see it from the perspective of generating revenue for the government without seeing the clear gains in terms of helping to collate and preserve data that could help stem the rising insecurity in the land. Even the House of Representatives that ought to know better hurriedly issued an order that the commission should suspend the project, which its members described as exploitative. They forgot that the constitution does not confer on  them with such power as the execution of projects falls within the purview of the executive arm of government.

President Goodluck Jonathan highlighted the security advantage inherent in the scheme during its launch on September 2, 2011, when he stated that times like this (referring to the rising scourge of terrorism with vehicles used as means of conveying bombs) call for innovative solutions such as the new license and number plates which have individual faces attached to them. With the new system, the data for driver’s license and vehicle registration number are more robust and complete with the picture, fingerprints and address of owners such that the number plate is linked to the person.

This means that you can retain the number plate on your car when you want to sell it if you choose to. But the beauty of this system is that every car in the country can be traced to the owner at anytime as the process of selling one’s old car involves going back to the registering authorities to effect change of ownership since the proof of ownership document is now computer generated.

We may not be able to fully appreciate the security benefits of this system yet, but a bit of it would begin to dawn on us when we understand that it has not been possible to locate the real owners of the vehicles that have been used for the recent terrorist activities in the country because the present data of vehicle owners is not adequate. Most of those to whom the vehicles were traced based on available data were reported to have informed security agents that they had sold the cars and did not know the addresses of the people they sold the cars to. This, no doubt, frustrates investigation.

We all want the current terrorism scourge behind us as soon as possible. It is a new security challenge that needs new tools and innovative ideas to surmount. If the price to pay to make the work of tracking down the perpetrators of these heinous crimes is to pay a little more to transit to the new driver’s license and number plate system, it is definitely not too much.

The near-perfect security systems in the developed countries that we always refer to when our security agencies are not able to deliver as efficiently as we expect them to were built with the cooperation of their citizens who subjected themselves to the requirements for basic needs such as driver’s license and vehicle registration number that helped to build the data that their security agencies have come to rely upon to track down criminal elements for speedy resolution of criminal cases.

Mr. BEN EKORI, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Lagos.