nspector General of Police, Mike Okiro cried out yesterday over the increase in the spate of kidnappings in the country saying it was impossible for the police to stop the crime as the police cannot attach its personnel to 140million Nigerians.

Okiro cried out just as he disclosed that if the police is to succesfully combat the crime, the National Assembly must pass a bill instructing or compelling telephone service providers, to allow the police access to telephone transcripts so that kidnappers can be trailed and arrested.

“It is not easy for us to provide security for every individual. we have about 140million Nigerians. You find that kidnappers don’t always go to prominent people sometimes”.

“They go to schools and kidnap children. Am I going to attach policemen to schools? They go to churches to kidnap people. Am I going to attach policemen to churches? They go to houses and kidnap parents, old man and old women between the ages of 75 and 80 years. Am I going to attach police to all such people?

Explaining how the police can reduce the menace, the IG said, “I can only succeed in investigation if what I said, that is, service providers assist the police because these kidnappers make use of GSM to perfect and carry out their kidnapping plots”.

According to him, “I have consulted my legal department, I wanted to sponsor a bill before the national assembly and I said it loud and clear before the NASS that one of the problems we are having in the Police is that we have laws and impediments that are against our performance”.

“One is that in some countries when telephone calls are made the police have access to the providers but here once telephone calls are made with mobile phones, providers won’t give us that call log. They want us to get a court order and you cannot get a court order in an emergency like investigation.

These are the trends of kidnappings. You get the number you have to go through a tortuous and tedious way of getting court order before the service providers can give the call log”.

“Another thing also, the sale of sim cards is such that it is militating against our fight against crime. You can buy sim card in a traffic hold up.

You can walk into a market and buy sim card. You know that criminals use these sim cards for the purpose of crime when they finish they throw it away. I wanted to sponsor a bill and I said yesterday that the service providers should be compelled by the NASS”.

“There should be a bill compelling them one, to ensure that anybody that has a sim card is registered and known. If you have a sim card, we know who made that call and we can arrest that person if they have committed a crime with that sim card. But right now it is difficult so what do you expect the police to do?

“You see we cannot stop them from kidnapping, it is only through investigation. Once somebody carries out a kidnap and we are able to arrest him and prosecute him and punish him others will learn a lesson.

But if not, it becomes difficult. In as much as we cannot provide policemen for every individual we must be given that wherewithal to be able to investigate anybody who kidnaps a person and ask for ransom”.

“And secondly, I want to advise Nigerians not to pay ransom because if somebody kidnaps a person and he is not paid ransom it is an exercise in futility.

He will not do it again. But if people are paying ransom, people are now seeing that it is easier and better, more convenient to kidnap than to go and commit robbery”. “You can see that robbery has gone down it is now kidnapping. But I assure you if we are being supported we are going to put that to a halt”.

On Police recruitment

On police recruitment, he clarified that he was never querried on any payment of N1. 2billion saying, “I appeared before the Senate committee and I explained to the committee that what I was doing is not anything extraordinary. It is the wish of the president that the Nigeria police force should move forward not to remain in the doldrums, not to remain in the dark ages that we have been”.

“The world is going computerized because if you are not literate in computer in this world you are not a member of this world. And to support this I embarked on a programme that all police officers should be computer literate. That is going on. We are receiving support from outsiders, some people have donated computers to the NPF some are even sponsoring police officers to be trained in computer. That is the good job I have started”.

‘’Now every body is going to the internet now for many things. even the military, the navy, air force, immigration, customs, NNPC, they are doing recruitment via internet and we have to follow suit. Police should not remain behind. In addition to my e-policing exercise we want to ensure that people coming to the police have a measure of knowledge in computer. Those who do not have computer knowledge will now try to learn computer so that they can fit in when they come in”.

“People are saying that not everybody is computer literate. That is good but Are we going to go back because some people are not computer literate there fore the police force should not be computer literate because some people are not computer literate?

“It is like saying that because people are not educated therefore anybody coming to the police should be an illiterate. So that is not a good argument. I appeared before the committee and I explained this thing to them and they said yes that we can go ahead. Because of those people who are not computer literate, who don’t have assess to the internet we shall make hard copies available to state headquarters”.

Okiro is right in this instance but a leader must not show any sign of weakness.

We need good legislation to compel people to register SIM cards with a valid ID card.

abeg,
who made this guy police IG? He is no longer after al qaeda. i bet he was hoping to distract nigerians with the alqaeda story,

Work is here now, do it, he's crying.
Hmnn, na wa

when they were kidnapping the foreigners where was he?lol Now the foreigners are gone and the chicken has come to roost.biz must continue
hes not serious.