•IT offers surer route to fighting crime and securing the environment. Take it!
On July 5, 2022, terrorists broke into the Kuje Custodial Centre, Abuja, with guns booming. When the guns had quietened and the dust settled, 68 Boko Haram prisoners had vanished, among the 879 inmates that could not be accounted for.
Investigations later found that the close-circuit television (CCTV) system at the facility was a joke. The terrorists blasted off the few mounted CCTV cameras. But they could well have saved their bullets! It was later found the cameras were non-functional!
How different might all that have been — had the facility’s CCTV system been efficient and effective? The resultant surveillance, from that system, top-notch? And if, as a result, the terrorists were nabbed, even before they fired a single shot?
That graphic paint shows the huge — nay, stiff — opportunity cost, of not fully annexing IT to make that custodial centre near-impregnable. Had it been otherwise, the jail-storming wouldn’t have happened, not to mention terrorists being sprung from jail.
After the Kuje attack though, the Senate passed a resolution that all custodial centres be fitted with CCTV. Three years later, it would be interesting to see how much the authorities have used IT to bolster security in our custodial centres.
Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is also a sad story on the wanton neglect of technology. It could have helped to better secure the city’s facilities; and protect citizens resident there from violent and sundry crimes.
The especial scandal of Abuja is its failed CCTV project. In 2008, leveraging a Chinese loan valued at at least US$ 490 million, though inflation and interest would later push it to US$ 500 million, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua conceived the wonderful idea of a CCTV-powered surveillance system to tightly cover the entire FCT. The project started in 2010.
Sadly, however, not much has come out of it. The contractor not only allegedly vanished with the bulk of the money — at least relative to CCTV cameras installed. Not much has been heard of the project since then. This is why Senator Adamu Ailero, who was Abuja minister when the contract was awarded, is shrilly calling for the failed CCTV project to be probed. But so far, parliamentary probes into the project have hit a brick wall. That is not good enough.
Meanwhile, for years after, Abuja had come under serious violent crimes and terrorist attacks, the most dreary being the Boko Haram attack on the UN Nigeria Office in the capital on August 26, 2011. That Boko Haram vehicle-bomb killed no less than 23 people and injured more than 80 others.
The same FCT had also battled bouts of kidnapping for ransom over the years, wilted under other violent crimes, especially in its far-flung outposts, and suffered “one chance” car-jackings. Though the security agencies have battled hard to control and curtail these crimes, leveraging IT would have made their work easier, and posted far better results.
This conclusion is, therefore, trite. Had the Abuja CCTV system succeeded, the city would have been far more secure. So, the Abuja case is another painful testimony to an IT path not taken. That should be corrected — and fast.
Aside the Kuje Correctional Centre and Abuja story, the March 28, 2022 Abuja-Kaduna terrorist train attack, which resulted in the abduction of passengers, is yet another crime the use of technology could have helped to stave off. It is welcome though that, post-attack, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has rallied to boost safety and security in its rail network.
All things said, government at all levels must get more savvy at fully using technology to secure our environment. But a point to start is correcting the sad Abuja story. The failed CCTV project should not only be probed, and anyone found culpable tried and punished, the Federal Government should not rest until that project is fully mounted and smoothly running.
Abuja is the federal capital. Nothing should stop it from being the model Nigerian city, to others, in technology-powered security.
