Blame security agencies for inability to track kidnappers, others — NCC

Many times, people have wondered how the kidnappers and other bandits who are causing untold mayhem in the country, manage to get away, even after they are captured on videos, recorded on other devices and most of all when they make contact with their victims’ families.

Senate President of the Nigerian Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, Henry Okunomo has expressed deep worry that in this age of tech advancement and the height Nigeria has attained in technological development, kidnappers could make contact with a victim’s families without being rounded up by security agents the next minute.

A worried Okunomo who appeared on television recently to discuss the issue of his abducted colleagues, appeared frustrated and clearly expressed dissatisfaction with the way security agencies are handling the matter.

He said: “I am not satisfied with the way security agencies are going about the matter. The government cannot tell me there is no other way this kidnapping thing can be nipped in the bud. After all, there are several measures already in place, why are they not working?”

The measures Okunomo was referring to, included the SIM card registration which the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC carried out in 2011; the Nigerian Identity Number, NIN enrolment, which the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC began in 2015; the NIN-SIM Registration exercise which the Federal government carried out in 2020, involving the NCC, NIMC and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; and even the NigComSat-1R Communications satellite which the country shot into the orbit since 2012.

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These measures, according to the government, were mainly to improve National Security by strengthening the capacity of Law Enforcement Agencies to tackle criminal use of mobile phones by checkmating activities of criminals. They were also to help simplify verification process and thus enable more secure transactions and interactions using mobile devices boosting confidence and participation in the digital economy; and also to improve governance and service delivery by providing accurate data for policymaking, facilitate secure access to E-government services online, as well as aiding in the implementation of social programs

However, despite all these measures, bandits, and kidnappers operate recklessly. Victims’ accounts at different times suggest that either the measures are not effective or someone in a position of taking action is complicit in the crimes.

In Zamfara State, a kidnap victim, Mallam Yushau Jangeme, was reported to have said security agents in his village, Jangeme, did nothing to trace the telephone calls of the bandits who kidnapped him. According to the publication, Jangeme said, at the time bandits kidnapped seven people in his village and he was contacted to bring ransom before they could be freed.

According to him, when he got to the forest to give kidnappers N1.4m out of N3m demanded, they detained him, saying he must bring the remaining N1.6m. All these happened irrespective of him having made available the phone numbers of his kidnappers to security agents before heading into the bush.

Everywhere, the story is the same. A public affairs commentator, Mr Chike Ogbu, who also expressed dissatisfaction with the way security agents are handling the case of the abducted medical students, said he could not understand the sense of SIM registration or its link with NIN when people could make ransom calls and not getting arrested with all the data that were supposed to accrue from the registrations.