Laetitia’s agony

By Kene Obiezu

Sir: Late Ms. Laetitia Dagan who was an Assistant Director with the Presidency has been long dead and buried and as with all murder cases, the police is making efforts to identify, apprehend and prosecute her killers.

She was allegedly killed by cybercriminals who lived close to her in Abuja. They reportedly broke into her house at night, killed her and set her ablaze after identifying her as the person responsible for their ordeal at the hands of men of the Nigeria Police Force. She was said to have reported them to the police for disturbing her privacy.

These days, it seems that wherever the country turns, it finds itself mired in insecurity. This pervasive insecurity, invidious in its reach, is everywhere. In the Northeast it takes the form of Boko Haram‘s relentless assaults on Nigerians and their lands. In other parts of the country, criminal herdsmen break out upon rural dwellers and their property from time to time like plagues, leaving blood and bile in their wake.

Now, to complete the Nigerian insecurity nightmare is an extensive battery of criminals who specialize in keeping the country insecure, anxious and ultimately overwhelmed. This would include kidnappers, armed robbers, drug traffickers, human traffickers, cultists and cybercriminals popularly called “yahoo boys.”

Now, it was into the hands of criminals operating under this last group that the hapless Ms. Laetitia fell and met her painful and grisly end. Cybercrime has recently become one of Nigeria‘s most formidable criminal challenges.

In a country still struggling to upgrade its Information Technology capacity, these cybercrimes and criminals provide stern tests for Nigeria‘s crime fighting resources. The criminals are mostly sophisticated, highly intelligent and deviously cunning. Their actions continue to harm Nigeria here at home and embarrass the country   before the international community.

Questions must also be asked about how those who killed Ms. Dagan came to find out that she was responsible for their travails at the Police station. It can be inferred that had the identity of Ms. Dagan remained concealed, her murderers would have been forced to desist from disturbing her privacy without carrying out retaliatory attacks against her.

Insecurity is a hydra-headed monster that fights back in many ways. As such, the Police and other security agencies in the country who combat crimes must devise protective measures to keep safe all those who provide them with critical information. Unless this is done, citizens who are in possession of information critical to fighting crime would prefer to hug the shadows and effectively derail the fight against crime.

Ms. Dagan‘s murderers must be made to face the law. Her blood cries out for justice and until this is visited on her attackers, her agony would remain Nigeria‘s agony at the hands of those who seek the country‘s   extinction.

• Kene Obiezu, Abuja.