Twenty years after 1984, Nigeria has finally arrived at the land of Big Brother; but the big man will not be
watching your every move because he will be too busy doing other things.
This time, for a change, his all-seeing eye, in the shape of surveillance cameras planted at all street corners, is supposedly for your own good. It is guaranteed to make you feel safer, it is said, from at least one of your worries—robbers!
According to police affairs minister, Mr. Broderick Bozimo, a contract worth N847,232,000.00 has been awarded to a supplier with the name of Tele-Mobile Nigeria Limited for the supply and installation of digital surveillance cameras at strategic locations in Abuja and Lagos. This is because the police has suddenly “realised that one way by which we can address the insecurity in the country is to install an integrated surveillance camera in strategic posts and areas.” I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This sounds more like one of those projects designed and put together by someone near to those in the corridors of power working in tandem with some veritable dumper in Europe intent on making some fast bucks. And despite what the authorities may claim, clearly this process is certainly not due, or is it?
But in addition to the Big Brother-style cameras, another N474,665,699.40 has been set aside for the purchase of motorcycles, because, according to the minister, “the motorcycles would ensure that we reach remote areas.” But surely, this is beside the point. When pick-up loads of policemen in open country can’t confront robbers and do the job, how can a lone police cyclist do better in a remote area?
Doubtless, it is not the remoteness of the crime scene that has made thieves and robbers so effective and law enforcement agents so ineffective. It is the I-don’t-care attitude of the crime busters, not the clandestine invisibility of the criminals. Buying and installing cameras is not likely to make robbers any more visible and toying with so much money is like adding insult to injury.
It is not as if these robbers and allied criminals operate in the dark or away from the gaze of people. No, they do their thing in broad daylight; and you don’t need surveillance cameras to pick them out whether in the cities or on the highways. They are out there in the open, only that the society lacks men of courage to confront them.
They are determined and seemed to have unending sources of supply of materiel. The real tragedy began with the laxity that allowed guns come into the country in the first place, and the short sight that led the same police force in such circumstance to look the other way; or, at the end of the day, even to let their own guns for hire to robbers. But why not?
But when the whole society is steeped in such a frenzy of thievery, why should the police be an exception, and expected to display undue bravery while others get rich? Why should society put its policemen in such an unequal battle?
Everyone knows that it is not by accident that robbers become more dedicated than the police. Robbers have greater motivation and are better armed and have immediate and more practical incentives. Their haul in an hour of operation, for instance, can be more than police salary for 20 years. And there is the understandable and simple arithmetic that robbers are more committed to money than policemen are committed to country.
To make matters worse, the society doesn’t give as much respect to retired police officers as it gives to usually affluent, retired robbers. For the society at large, especially to those on the perpetual look-out for some so-called role-models, this is one more reason why it pays to be the committer of crime than the catcher of criminals. And so the vicious circle continues, and digital cameras are unlikely to improve the situation.
And even supposing that its conception is not so totally flawed, there are many reasons why the surveillance-camera project may not work at all. It will in the end prove to be simply money down the drain. Won’t it have been cheaper to station a police constable at each and every street corner of the two cities instead of a camera that is prone to at least two major problems?
There is the issue of power failure. What this means is that the criminal-catching efficiency of the project is only as effective as the efficiency of the National Electric Power Authority, NEPA, or our traffic lights. Surely, at least up to the moment of writing police constables don’t need electricity to function. But going by their lethargy perhaps it may not be long before they begin to do.
However, before they do so, they need funds to function, and this money can more usefully be spent on them. Supposing that 20,000 constables will be needed to do the job in the two cities, the value of the two contracts can support their salary for more than ten years. Thus, in addition to providing employment, this huge amount can ensure that at least some criminals are caught. With the cameras, it is to be feared that all of them will escape—during power failures.
It is not impossible indeed that with electricity now employed in the fight against crime, instead of bribing the police, robbers will resort to bribing NEPA officials to make electricity supply fail in the areas they wish to operate. No doubt, this can be arranged with the payment of a modest amount. Isn’t this Nigeria?
And even if these digital cameras will utilise solar energy, that’s no guarantee that they will work. We have seen solar-powered phone-booth break down as if the sun has gone on strike; and so, what won’t?
The other major problem is that sooner or later, the cameras will be stolen. It is not clear how and where the cameras will be mounted, but there are indications they may be fixed on NEPA poles or poles of the Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd., NITEL, on trees, on buildings or on their own specially constructed poles. Whichever is the case, the cameras will not be beyond the reach of the very people they will be installed to catch.
We have seen the desperation of our thieves all over our townships and along highways. They have stripped all our bridges of their side railings. Now it appears they have turned to stealing the bridges themselves. Nigeria will be the first country in the world in which people steal bridges. But unless they have the intention of stealing the rivers also, of what benefit will stealing bridges be?
A friend back from a trip told me yesterday that thieves in Lagos have started stealing even the bridges themselves. He said at least two bridges are in danger of disappearing – the flyover at Ojuelegba and the adjacent flyover at Mosallashi. After stripping the outer railings, robbers have now resorted to smashing the concrete structure of the flyover in order to steal the railing and rods embedded in it.
It should be obvious that whichever mode of mounting is used for the cameras, they are in great and determined danger of disappearing. We may therefore need to station a police constable to stop thieves from stealing each camera installed. So, in that case, why spend N847,232,000 and duplicate the work by stationing policemen? And even if the cameras work, and there is electricity supply, and they are not stolen, and they are properly maintained, and they take pictures of criminals, who exactly will go after them and catch them? Isn’t this the beginning of another opportunity?
Perhaps some friends to the denizens of the corridors of power should put together another contract to supply the infra-red criminal-catching machinery and equipment that should be installed alongside each camera. I am sure this will not cost more than N10 billion. And what chicken feed that is! This way, we can spare our constables—and while soldiers put their orders for Ogugbuaja’s pepper-soup, police constables can go for their suya.
Each time the camera snaps the picture of a criminal, an infrared light flashes to activate the machinery that catches him. All so easy. No doubt, Nigeria today is living in a situation not unlike Kafka’s unreal world. We embrace what is so unreal and yet we deny what sticks out like a sore thumb.
Otherwise, how can Chief Olusegun Obasanjo deny that there is abject poverty in Nigeria today? He gave his surprising denial at the presentation to the Federal Executive Council of the draft master-plan for the development of the Niger Delta by the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, on November 10, 2004.
“There is virtually nobody in our own rural area as far as I know that does not know what he will eat tomorrow morning,” Obasanjo said. This simply proves that there are many things he doesn’t know. If we are merely to go by the five key parameters of poverty used by the African Development Bank, more than 70 per cent of Nigerians would fall into the poverty bracket. The parameters – access to good shelter, good drinking water, education, health-care delivery and employment opportunities – would leave at least 90 per cent of the people in abject poverty whether they are in the rural or urban areas. The issue is not to deny it; and the right attitude is to seek to remedy the situation.
Not knowing what he will eat tomorrow morning? Why, I know many who do not know what they will eat for all mornings up to next week. But Obasanjo is neither aware of this nor convinced by the work of the experts on the master-plan committee, which found that 70 per cent of Nigerians in the Niger Delta region live in abject poverty. My first reaction was to ask: “Only 70%”.
“We haven’t had a war, we haven’t had an epidemic, we haven’t had four years of drought,” Obasanjo said in exasperated bewilderment. Certainly for many in Nigeria, mere existence is a war—both a physical war and a war of wits.
And many will agree that we have always had an epidemic in this country: it is called poverty. It is painful and it kills in large numbers. The proof, if one is needed, is that billions have been voted by Obasanjo himself to alleviate it. Whether he has had any success is a different matter. Money of course always alleviates poverty – but not necessarily that of the poor.
And we surely have had, not just four years of drought, but a five-year-long drought. It is a drought of ideas to run this government. But understanding all this is not logic that is easy to grasp, especially for those at the helm of its affairs, with the result that Obasanjo was forced to ask how so many people come to be so poor in so short a time.
“What took us from 42 [per cent] in 1992 to 70 [per cent] in 1996?” he asked. The answer is simple enough, sir: your government.
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