BIOMETRIC? HABA POLICE!

By Guest Writer, Saidu Nafunche
This indeed, was my spontaneous reaction when the police announced their new platform for a vastly improved highly efficient Central Motor Registry. Biometric? What a cheek! The senior officer who unveiled the initiative to the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs should have shown more sensitivity to our bruised nerves. The fraud riddled word assaulted our battered national psyche via sundry disclosures about the Police Pensions Fund. Really, I feel so disturbed by the word I have a mind to banish it from this article.

Adjective, my dictionary says, “using human physical characteristics (face shape, finger prints, etc.) for identification.” It looks so harmless word doesn’t it? It’s very attractive too as a new index of development planning. Unfortunately, it reminds me of “ultra-modern,” another fancy expression that policy makers love to use, which has turned to a euphemism for flagrant over-invoicing and inflated building contracts. By the same token, just add ‘biometric” to the simplest data generation exercise. The faint click you hear is a mouse ‘squeaking’-the digital variety that is- and whoosh! Like a tale from the Arabian Nights, someone or, some people are riding a magic carpet!

That, of course, was my first instinctive feeling. Reflecting further, I asked myself the pertinent question: how equipped are the police to handle the new, improved, okay biometric CMR? Because, it seems so clear to my stiff, analogue senses that a lot of hardware and software, not to mention staff ware would be required to remedy the shambles that was the old CMR and cross over to the new digital regime. The Nigeria Police that we know today, can it manage the process efficiently without major snafus in the form of serious logistic challenges and operational setbacks occasioned by inadequate planning and worse, insufficient funding?

Nonetheless, Article 6 of the Police Memorandum on Generating and Keeping Data for Crime Prevention Purposes states as follows: By December 2011, the Central Motor Registry (CMR) was upgraded to the Biometric Central Registry (BCMR). The BCMR has necessary logistics, modern equipment, and requisite infrastructure to enable it provide the required capacity and biometric data base for all transactions within the enabling Act with respect to automobile registration, keeping records of stolen and recovered, online reporting of incidences of stolen vehicles and ensuring compliance with regulations.

Wow! Is that really so, I asked myself. What is the problem, then? What is the inspector general of police waiting for? What is stopping him from launching a scheme for which everything is in place? From my picayune point of view, any suggestion that the FRSC is dabbling into police affairs and must be stopped first, does not hold water. The most that the road safety corps can do is to generate its own data by its own means. Since 1958 when the Road Traffic Act which gave birth to the CMR came into being, the police have maintained a direct and formal relationship with the Motor Licensing Authorities. The police have not told us that the relationship is dead. Besides, the law is quite clear on whose duty it is to maintain a Motor Vehicles Traffic Statistics and by association a Central Registry of Vehicle Licenses. No one can take that responsibility away and give it to another agency without due process.
Heck, it is still a democracy, is it not and we are all bound by the Rule of Law, are we not?
Going through the Memorandum very carefully and applying my aging analogic senses to the matter, I have come to the sorry conclusion that Article 6 was very economical with the possible truth. Na lie, I am forced to declare. Dem no get not’ing yet. Dem just dey bluff sake of say FRSC wan steal dem show. Money no dey ground, orderwise, dem for don’ begin tell us make we ready…
Think about it for a minute. Obviously, the moribund condition of the CMR allowed the FRSC to step up its act for a greater stake in the data management regime. After waking up to the portentous trespass, the police then launched a counter attack to defend and protect its territory. Having done that, successfully, I think, it behoves the police authorities to engage the public proactively with their plans for resuscitating the CMR to its blazing potential as a crime fighting weapon. The major challenge is budgeting related and aside of the need to lobby legislators for adequate funding; the police do not need their permission to rekindle the CMR.

For good measure the police have said they are not concerned about who registers vehicles or produces number plates. They only desire that the process is streamlined to generate the necessary information for monitoring vehicular movement for the prevention and detection of vehicle related crime. The police standpoint is faultless. No other government agency needs vehicular data as much as the police do to carry out its duties. The police should therefore be in the front seat of gathering and updating these all important records.

With regard to the funding issues, the police should consider creative ways of getting around the constraints. In line with new thinking in public financing, the police should consider public private partnerships to ameliorate the envisaged budgeting constraints of providing all the equipment needed. Each unit of the Motor Transport Division should have a partnership contract with an individual contractor, to provide the standardised processors, video camera, external hard drive, etc., and under close supervision of the Motor Transport Division, capture the required biometrics from vehicle owners in its area of operations. The contractor earns a standard and attractive percentage of the fees paid, while the police keep the information collected.

The inspector general should be paying me for this consultative effort. I should be sending him a Memorandum on the matter, soon.