Funny question, yes, but there is a sense in which the recent jaw-jaw at the Senate between the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Nigeria Police reads like a secondary school debating tussle. Farmers and doctors, mummies and daddies: of course, they all are vital to our wellbeing. But often, the panel of judges is swayed, not so much by what is said as who said it- a bright, eloquent or scruffy, stuttering debater.
The Senate Committee is yet to announce its decision, but given the intense love-hate relationship between the Nigerian people and their police, the gavel may swing in favour of the officers with khaki shirts over reddish trousers and head gear to match. Yes, the ones in light blue over black trousers and matching beret may lose the argument on the strength of poor image alone. In matters affecting their welfare but requiring stringent police oversight or vigilance, the public will likely vote for ditching the dishes with the dishwater. Yet, the police is only a reflection of the society it polices.
All things considered, the Nigeria Police must be given the wherewithal to carry out its lawful responsibilities for the maintenance of law and order in Nigeria. To do that successfully, the police must manage a certified system for gathering, storing and retrieving information on the gamut of criminal activities in the country. The issue is so clear no one should dare question the good intentions of the police. However, the bone of dubious contention between the police and the road safety commission concerns data connected with the registration of vehicles in Nigeria.
In the opinion of the FRSC, everything to do with vehicle documentation falls within the province of safeguarding our roads and highways and protecting Nigerians from untimely deaths through road accidents. Indeed, the high fatality rate of road accidents in Nigeria gives serious cause for concern and the FRSC deserves all the support it can get to make our roads safer. But the Corps errs in believing and trying to convince the public that it has the primary responsibility for documentation, storage and retrieval of vehicle records.
The question to ask is this: before the FRSC came into existence via a military decree in 1988, how did the nation cope with the mandatory records of vehicle ownership in Nigeria? Answer: the police ran and maintained a Central Motor Registry (CMR) that kept the records of all licensed vehicles and renewal of such by the Motor Licensing Authorities. Historians may like to note that the CMR was established thirty long years in 1958, before road safety marshals appeared on the streets and highways of our dear land.
History will also record that as time went by the CMR fell short of expectations along with the general decline in service delivery standards that became the lot of our nation. The rapid expansion of the economy and the stupendous rise in vehicle ownership in Nigeria without the commensurate equipment of the Motor Traffic Division of the police combined to stretch and weaken the efficiency of the CMR. Government did not avail the police the necessary technology to operate a data base backup for the CMR. Besides, the increasing sophistication of criminal gangs using state of the art forgery techniques to falsify vehicle particulars, made a mockery of the old manual methods of the CMR.
Police authorities aver however, that they have done their best to upgrade the CMR and mitigate the negative effects of playing catch-up. Still, the enhanced CMR configured in 1997 and the Police Vehicle Recovery Portal unveiled in 2009, offer little hope against a highly digitalised underworld. But since last year, the police authorities have developed a Biometric Central Motor Registry (BCMR) employing facial and other demographics to keep round the clock track of vehicle ownership and movement. In their submissions to the Senate the police authorities are enthusiastic about the BCMR, which they say will “usher in a new phase of law enforcement on vehicle related crime, robust biometric vehicle data base, enhanced application of forensic investigative capacity for the police which will engender better service delivery and improve public satisfaction.”
This says to me that our much maligned police are raring to retrieve their sullied image. Nothing could be more patriotic than to give them maximum support in this task. The point was roundly made at the Senate Hearing that the data generated from the BCMR will be available for use by other law enforcement and security agencies. To this end, it was doubly emphasized that the police alone have the right as enshrined in the Road Traffic Act of 1958 among other legislations to collate and coordinate the release of vehicular statistics to agencies that require them.
This is as it should be, because though the FRSC may use the data only to monitor the infringement of traffic regulations, the police need it to keep a tab on potential or actual violations of the law in which a vehicle is involved. And this may range from burglary to armed robbery, kidnapping, fraud and terrorism.
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