Police BCMR: One burden too many

Recently, the Nigerian Police Force announced that it had come up with crime detection, prevention and fighting mechanism called Biometrics Central Motor Registry (BCMR) for Nigerian motorists. This ‘great invention’, the police added, would also help them to fight terrorism, kidnapping and car theft.

Frank Mba, the Police Force spokesman, who made this announcement, explained to journalists at a press briefing in Abuja that the decision to introduce BCMR was made as a response to contemporary security challenges bordering on terrorism, high incidence of car theft, carjacking, kidnapping and other acts of crimes and criminality in our society. Mba also announced that motorists, starting from September 16, should visit police commands and other designated formations to purchase scratch cards which would give pins to be used for registration, adding that vehicle owners are expected to pay N3, 500.00 while tricycles popularly called ‘Keke Marwa’ or ‘Keke NAPEP’ and motor-cycles would pay  N1,500 and these are to be paid through designated banks, on-line or at some police commands.

Perhaps, for want of better ironic expressions, we would describe this plan as a brilliant idea from an evil genius, not just because it is ill-advised and duplicative, but also because it is exploitative and deceptive as a security-fighting mechanism. Above all, It is one burden too many for motorists to bear.

We are alarmed and concerned about the plight of motorists and, indeed all Nigerians, who are frequently subjected to needless trauma and psychological imbalance by the privileged few in positions of authority who see them (the motorists) as easy prey for revenue generation.

Here is the Nigerian motorist who is hounded from all corners by the police, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and  Lagos  State starry-eyed road agencies including  LASTMA officials, and worse by the devils-on-duty called vehicle inspection officers (VIO) whose own vehicles hardly get good tyres or complete rear lights.

Only recently, the VIO and the FRSC connived against the same motorists on a new unified drivers licence and, at each registration centre for this, the motorist is subjected to harrowing experiences and mindless extortion by people fronting for these agencies of government who remain in employment because the same motorists patriotically pays their taxes and rates.

 We join other well-meaning Nigerians to condemn this fraud because we believe that the police can go ahead with its duty of fighting crime and ensuring security of lives and property in the country without subjecting motorists to undue hardship by extorting money from them.

For us, if the aim is just to get biometric data of citizens, we make bold to remind them that there are several avenues such as the FRSC, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) and even the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) among others where Nigerians, have their data.

It beats our imagination as much as it offends our sensibilities that the police is coming back again with this idea just 14 months after it was thrown out by the Senate in July 2012 when it was seen as an unnecessary duplication of function. The Senate had asked the police to suspend the exercise seven months after the BCMR system was launched in December 2011, ordering it to stop collecting the N3, 500.00 fees charged for the service.

Like the Senate did then, we reason that the BCMR is the same as the vehicle owner’s biometric data scheme administered by the FRSC which the motorist is forced through the eye of the needle to get.

In more sane climes, citizens’ data are captured centrally by one government agency and these can be accessed by other agencies that require such data. It is disorderly for every government agency to go about capturing citizens’ data on their own, thus creating multiple burden for the citizenry.

We are pained to note that different agencies of government in this country frequently arrogate to themselves powers to exploit and extort citizens because governance in the country is actually on ‘holiday’ as leaders are today more concerned with politics for 2015 elections than the business of government and governance.