ICT, Other Solutions to Kidnapping

Kidnapping that started as agitation to be heard by the people of Niger Delta, has now assumed a dangerous slant.
Nobody is now spared especially in the South- South and South-East parts of the country where most of the hoodlums who made armed robbery their occupation, have turned their back on it, embracing kidnapping.
Kidnapping is thriving in these parts because in the risk analysis of the criminals, the chances of success far outweigh their failure. Most of the kidnapping incidents were not reported in the media because many of those affected preferred a quiet approach to solving the problem.
It believed that no less than N13 billion might have been raked in by the criminal gangs.
The human divestment impacts on new investments in the regions will affect generations unborn.
Most worrying is the seemingly inability of government and police to contain the rising crime.
State governments in the regions apart from reckless loose ranting and frivolous excuses have turned their backs while the states are overtaken by bands of marauders.
Elsewhere, the Nigeria Police which lack capacity to contain the crime are also believed to be colluding with kidnappers in perpetrating their acts.
Kidnapping is booming in the country because abductors continue to communicate with the police for over a week with their location remaining unknown.
And, since the kidnapping saga became a national issue, there is no record of conviction of suspects, just as known sponsors of kidnapping like some traditional rulers and politicians are still left to roam the street.
That is why we support the new initiative by the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) to use telecommunications to fight the menace.
We commend the proactive leadership at the NCC and urge telecommunications companies in Nigeria and indeed all Nigerians to rally round the NCC.
Under the plan unveiled by Dr. Bashir Gwandu, acting executive vice chairman (EVC), NCC, while Subscribers Identity Module (SIM) card registration offers significant solution to the issue of kidnapping, another project that could complement Sim-card registration is a plan to issue subsidy to operators to install equipment on every mast and tower that could be used for triangulating between sites in order to identify real-geographical location of both GPS and none GPS-enabled mobile handsets.
Gwandu said that one of such plans could significantly curtail or even eliminate the menace of kidnapping in the country.
He said that in addition to the triangulation project, low earth orbit satellites could also track all GPS-enabled handsets and that there other equipment that could be deployed to tract and identify the locations of handsets being used to solicit for ransom.
According to Gwandu once ownership of numbers can be identified, handsets can be tracked, and their geographical location becomes identifiable, then, any call made to solicit for ransom will help to locate the kidnappers.
While NCC is on that, the federal government must know that kidnapping is the direct reaction to the mismanagement and stealing of the country’s collective resources and therefore must do everything possible to stem corruption.
It must also take measure to create jobs that will take the army of unemployed Nigerians out of the street.
There is also need to rebuild the country infrastructure hobbled by years of neglect to ensure steady power supply, good roads and so on that will fire the kiln of production.