Making security communication system work
When in March 2008 the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Messrs ZTE Corporation of China towards deploying a comprehensive, reliable, modern and robust National Public Security Communication Systems (NPSCS) for national security operations, many Nigerians were neither aware nor understood the foresightedness of such an initiative. That was before the surge and scourge of the Boko Haram, long before that first bomb on October 1, 2010. Since then, Nigerians have seen and suffered from more bombings, kidnappings, general insecurity and loss of lives and property while the police and other security apparatuses in the country stand perplexed, clueless as to the direction of the next attack and totally helpless in the midst of the escalation. Our armed forces are always dismally steps behind the perpetrators in terms of access to relevant and much-needed information.
All over the world, the police and other security agencies have come to rely on digital tools in communicating with citizens who want to support them to fight crime as traditional modes of information become too arcane, cumbersome and unreliable. Digital tools offer an efficient way to disseminate bulletins, alerts and information in the wake of public safety events because they enable citizens to feel more secure interacting with the police. They also offer a way for the police to keep an open dialogue and share information abundantly so that citizens feel connected and informed. This enhanced confidence helps assuage citizens’ concerns about anonymity and provides easy access to the tech-savvy younger generation that may ignore traditional media channels, such as television or newspaper, and want information delivered and shared across mobile platforms.
In light of the above benefits, it is curious that the Federal Government did not attempt to operationalise the NPSCS until 2010 in response to Boko Haram’s increasing violence when the police received permission to commence the project, given the urgency of the security situation in the country. Part of the deliverables from the attempt was the largely failed closed circuit television infrastructure installed around the federal capital, Abuja between 2010 and 2012 but which, surprisingly, was not meaningfully inked to any digital platform of database.
It is important to note that the foundation of the National Public Security Communication Systems project is laid out in chapter 14 of the National Telecommunications Policy which requires government to ensure the provision of telecommunications services for emergency and distress situations. It is also equally true that the maintenance of internal security has remained one of the cardinal considerations of successive administrations and of which the implementation of the NPSCS is consistent. In line with these, the Federal Government embarked upon a reform programme for the Nigeria Police which was intended to re-position the force to effectively meet the challenges of the 21st Century. But, over the years, nothing tangible has resulted from the NPSCS vis-à-vis the purpose for which it was conceived.
Yet, no other administration has been more vilified than that of President Goodluck Jonathan, both locally and internationally, for a seeming poor handling of the Boko Haram insurgency and other matters of insecurity within the country. At some point, the president even lamented that some of the members of his government were sympathetic to the Boko Haram. That assertion may be not very far from the reality on ground when one critically considers the activities of some ‘president’s men’ in ensuring that the police and other security apparatuses are deprived of the requisite tools to effectively carry out their jobs, especially through the deliberate sabotage of the NPSCS project.
As an integrated system, the NPSCS was designed to provide a robust, reliable, secure and independent multimedia communications system (voice, video and data) for the police and other security agencies employing CDMA Technology Rev B. The project comprises five main components/subsystems and was basically supposed to provide an Internet Protocol (IP) cloud for the various applications; the e-policing subsystem to facilitate the deployment of e-policing databases; video conferencing subsystem for video conferencing by all commands of the Nigeria Police with the Force Headquarters (FHQ) and among themselves; coalition emergency response subsystem to empower emergency response and provide a national platform for emergency calls by citizens to the Nigeria Police nationwide; and video surveillance subsystem.
Indeed, the politics and intrigues that have surrounded and stultified the full mobilisation of the NPSCS project leave no well-meaning Nigerian in doubt that some very powerful individuals have chosen to place personal pecuniary interests above national interest and the survival of Nigeria as a country. As alarming as it may sound, there are current indications that plans are underway to ‘sell’ the NPSCS communication frequency to a private company whose only interest is business gains. National security is a national imperative and the assets of NPSCS should remain a national resource. It is neither international best practice nor politically prudent to attempt to privatise such a critically sensitive infrastructure in whole or in part. Just the hint of such a gambit by Safaricom in Kenya resulted in query and politicisation by their parliament.
The time for the administration to intervene is now. The insurgency is undoubtedly getting more emboldened and dastardly in its attacks, even daring and mocking the Nigerian and ECOWAS military and security structures. The Nigerian Army has recently indicated that it is now poised to wage ‘the final onslaught’ on Boko Haram; but without adequate information capacity through a careful roll-out and implementation of the NPSCS project in strict compliance with the extant policy, the likelihood of a successful campaign against the insurgency may remain a gloomy mirage.