Fear of reprisals: Some of the people who may know about criminal activities of our closest relations and friends are always afraid of reprisals or acts of revenge. Criminals and their friends and associates can arrange and eliminate the suspected informants and may even subject their entire household to terrible punishments and harassment.

(3)        THE BOYS WORK FOR THE GRAND MASTERS

There is no doubt that most of the armed bank-robbers we hear about, for example, are only ‘errand boys’ who serve the interests of their grand masters. The boys give accounts of their ‘mission’ and stewardship to their masters after each successful operation. There are also ‘middlemen’ who must coordinate the operations, and provide the necessary logistics for each operation. The boys are usually told to keep sealed lips on their operation and dealings with their masters. Consequences of betrayal are great. The boys may fail to get their little remuneration, or may even lose their lives or find their entire families decimated if they fail to keep the secrets of their operations.

Not a few unfortunate captured criminals have refused to make any disclosures about their masters even at threats of torture and death. They claim they had taken oaths under the penalty of death never to reveal the identities of the Grand Masters in crime. This is possible in every society and culture. Most long-term investigations world-wide have failed to reveal the identities of key players in some assassinations and criminal activities. If key planners and sponsors of criminal activities were to be known in Nigerian, no doubt, there will be uproar and great mourning in the land! Not even the prophets of the new religious movements in Nigeria, or the most sophisticated traditional occult magicians can unravel the mysteries surrounding the identities of those behind most kidnapping cases witnessed in Nigeria.

(4)        BEHOLD THE COLLABORATORS IN CRIME!

For certain criminal operations like bank-robbery or kidnapping to succeed, some people have to supply the logistics. Logistics is the management of the flow of resources between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet some requirements for a successful achievement of a goal.

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing an operation, and controlling an organization, in our case here, some young people for the purpose of accomplishing a goal, kidnapping a named person, or carrying out a bank robbery. The resources managed in logistics can include physical items as cars to be used, equipment, and quantity and quality and type of weapons or ammunition to be used, as well as information needed. The logistics of physical items usually involves the integration of information flow.

The one who supplies the information plays a major role in the successful execution of an operation. Igbo people have the saying “Onye ma mmadu n’egbu you” (an unfortunate fellow is usually betrayed by his closest associate or friend). Put in another way “Oke n’ulo gwara oke no n’ama, n’ihe no na ngiga” (It is domestic rat that informs the wild rat that there are some pieces of fish in smoke-basket). The real brain behind the operation may after all not be a foreigner. He may be a very close friend or relation.

The details, which someone uses to gain advantage for anything is supplied by a well informed person, an insider. So in most cases accusing fingers are pointed on workers in the bank whenever a successful bank-robbery takes place. “Who tells the thieves that a large amount of money is in the bank? Who tells them the right time to strike and the type of weapons to bring along, some dynamites to break the bank safes open? Who tells the security officials stationed in the highways and major roads to steer clear and out of trouble as the robbers take off to their mission?” There are always good informants to supply the details. If there are to be none or few in Nigeria most of the kidnapping and armed robbery operations would end up in woeful failures and disasters for the thieves. Many may be caught or killed.

Operators in high-class kidnapping missions and bank-robberies don’t take risks. They must be sure there are large sums of money in the bank and enough to go round all the participants as well as their sponsors when the booty is shared. There must be a lot to get from the bargain if a high-profile person, young and old was to be kidnapped.

The story of the young lady-accountant clerk in a First Bank branch at Onitsha, Anambra state who colluded with armed robbers to rob a customer that withdrew a large sum of money from the bank is still told and rehearsed by some incredulous villagers. The customer within few minutes’ walk from the bank was waylaid by a waiting armed gang on his way home. Immediately they reached their destination, the gang phoned the lady banker, informing her where to meet them to collect her own share of the booty.

But luck is not always on the side of the wicked. Very few people believed that such a young lady could be as treacherous as that and that makes many people shudder in disbelief. “So, she is a thief and even belonged to a gang?” O! Yes! There are many like her. That was only a tip of the iceberg. Many innocent Nigerians will fail into coma if they are told what happens in their country in the cover of darkness and during telephone conversations!

(5)        TRACKING DOWN CRIMINALS – A COLOSSAL FAILURE IN NIGERIA!

“Why are Nigerian leaders unable to track down criminals who use the mobile phone and services of phone companies to negotiate ransoms?” In the United States and many developing and developed countries, modern technology helps everyday to resolve intractable issues that in the past used to sound or look like mysteries.

Although Nigeria is not yet advanced in modern technology as United States and most other European countries, but Nigerian security officers can employ the services of high-tech communication systems, via satellite to track down phone callers who use the gadget to amass huge illegal wealth for themselves, their gangs and families and subject their captors to terrible nightmarish disorders from which only a few recover many years after their ordeals with the men of the underworld? This is not one million question!

One of the Nigerian computer technologists who addressed the august assembly explained how this works and how it has helped everyday to resolve even simple phone bill discrepancies in America. Almost every bit of phone conversation is recorded, time of call, location of the caller, duration of call etc. Hospital and ambulance attendants, fire-fighters, the police, and other security agencies respond to 911 emergency calls with ease. With or without GPS, they trace the exact location of the caller and render incredible services in times of need.

What is GPS? GPS (Global Positioning System) is a Satellite Navigation System. In US it is funded by and controlled by the U. S. Department of Defense. Although the system was designed for and is operated by the U. S. military, there are many thousands of civil users of GPS world-wide. GPS provides specially coded satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver, enabling the receiver to compute position, velocity and time.

Nigerian authorities must employ the services of modern technology to solve most of our problems that seem to have defied human solutions if Nigeria is to recover from the devastating shocks criminals operating in various guises have given to the nation’s development ventures. These were the closing warning and distress call the Nigerian computer and communications expert directed to Nigerian leaders and all and sundry that still have the interest of the nation at heart.

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