Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) have been co-opted in Nigeria’s battle against insecurity, even though it cannot work with Muhammadu Buhari bent on appeasing terrorists tormenting hapless citizens in his immediate backyard in the North.
Robots and AI may help fish out criminals, but if they are not prosecuted and sent to jail to deter them and others like them, the effort amounts to nothing. Criminals will be emboldened to commit more crime, they will not reduce or stop it.
Nonetheless, senators announced that the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has established a centre for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to deploy them against crime and insecurity.
This came when the Senate considered a report its Joint Committee on Legislative Compliance and Communications presented at plenary on “The spate of growing insecurity in Nigeria”.
Joint Committee Chairman Adelere Oriolowo (APC, Osun West) disclosed that SIM registration by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, which links National Identity Number (NIN), has drastically reduced the use of telephone by kidnappers to negotiate ransom.
He said the earlier successes of SIM registration were compromised by agents recruited by telecom firms that registered SIM card owners across the 774 councils.
This, he added, led the Communications Ministry to seek presidential approval for the temporary suspension of the sale of SIM cards and for the link of SIM to NIN.
The committee also found there were other programmes and projects by the ministry and its agencies to support security agencies in fighting crime, he said.
Using emergency line 112
Oriolowo disclosed that 23 Emergency Communication Centres (ECCs) using 112 code have been commissioned and another 12 are almost ready for commissioning.
His words: “The goal, according to the Minister, is to have at least one Emergency Communication Centre in every State of the Federation, by the first quarter of 2022.
“The Emergency Communication Centres are supposed to be multipurpose centres for emergencies and platforms for Nigerians to access and connect relevant institutions like the Fire Service, National Emergency Management Authourity (NEMA) and the police, as well as other security agencies.
“These emergency lines are toll-free and their effectiveness has been well reported across the country, including their usefulness, during the COVID-19 lockdown.”
Oriowolo decried the inability of the Communications Ministry and its agencies to provide information from phone data in cases of crime such as kidnapping because there is no legal mandate to do so without request from security agencies.
The Senate adopted the recommendations of the committee and asked the Communications Ministry to submit proposals to amend laws to combat crime and insecurity.
Collaboration of security agencies
Senators also urged security agencies to collaborate with the Communications Ministry by contacting it when phone is used to commit crime.
The security agencies include the
· Ministries of Defence
· Ministries of Interior
· Ministries of Police Affairs
· Office of the National Security Adviser
· Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
· Department of State Security Services
· Police
· Nigeria Customs Services
· Nigerian Immigration Service
Oriowolo explained that putting the ministry in the loop would also enable it to monitor regulators and their compliance with the directives to provide the profile of a telephone subscriber being investigated for crime by security agencies.
Buhari speaks platitudes on insecurity
However, the Senate did not reckon with the fact that insecurity has been escalating because Buhari fails to deal with it, as it suits his personal interest
Buhari had on Tuesday pledged to tackle insecurity, seeking the help of lawmakers in the battle, even as he refuses to rein in Islamist jihadists in the North and instead vigorously pursues agitators in the South and gloats about it on national television.
Banditry is rife every inch in the core North where Islamists do not want people to go to school and kidnap for ransom children who walk the jihadists’ gauntlet of hate.
Women and babies are being abducted in hospitals. As well as emirs in palaces.
Yet – just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned – Buhari engages in platitudes and distractions in pursuit of red herrings despite having the military capability to arrest, prosecute, jail, and stop the criminals ravaging his backyard in the North.
Buhari pampers and defends murderous Islamists.
He sends out fellow Fulani bigots to defend murderers who brazenly demand millions of naira in ransom. One of Buhari’s henchmen, Ahmad Gumi, an Islamic cleric, insists the criminals are aggrieved and should be appeased.
Jihadists are part of Buhari’s tools for his Fulani supremacist agenda – and that of a good chunk of the Northern elite who delights in impoverishing and oppressing the vast legion of Almajiris and Talakawas bursting at the seams all over the North.
Crime and insecurity cannot be solved until Buhari effectively deals with criminals.
