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- Ade Ipaye, believes that fighting insecurity should be based on adequate availability of sufficient information about the citizens.
- Mr Ipaye revealed that the Lagos State Government had been keeping a crime data register since 2009.
- He said that everyone who has been arrested for a crime in the state since 2009 has had their addresses, real names, photographs, and other biometric.
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The Lagos State Attorney-General, Ade Ipaye, believes that fighting insecurity in Nigeria should be based on adequate storage and availability of sufficient information about the citizens.
He made this assertion on Monday while appearing as guest on Chat212’s Sunrise Daily, where he spoke about the need for the Federal Government and other state governments to learn from the Lagos State Government’s residence registration exercise amongst other initiatives.
Mr Ipaye revealed that the Lagos State Government had been keeping a crime data register since 2009, which keeps record of anyone that has passed through the justice system in the state in an electronic form for the purpose of referring to them, should there be a need to search for people who commit crime.
He said that everyone who has been arrested for a crime in the state since 2009 has had their addresses, real names, photographs, fingerprints, and other biometric data captured and the database has become a comprehensive one that can help investigations.
He also said that the Resident Registration exercise being embarked on by the State Government has also been identified as a major tool for fighting insecurity, explaining that a system which “creates the knowledge that I could be arrested, I could be found” remained a major tool that could control crime.
On the cases of those who come in from other places to commit crime, Ipaye emphasized an improvement of border control, but insisted that information remained at the bottom of it all.
On the possibility of sharing the data with the Police, the Prison Service and other federal security agencies, Ipaye said that information for security purposes need to be shared else it is useless. Therefore they have created a structure that allows Police or any other security agency to request for the register for the purpose of investigating crime.
Lagos is known to have many miscreants who are known to constitute a threat to the society, and a Channels TV viewer asked via social media if the Crime Data Register have this class of people in it. Ipaye said that the register has some of them but “We are not in a position to get everybody into the database except those who have been arrested.”
He noted, “This kind of system is not going to solve all problems” but however added that it should be replicated nationwide as a starting point for fighting crime.
He asked what the essence of taking a criminal’s fingerprint would be when there is no database to run it through.
Mr Ipaye said that the spate of insecurity in Nigeria was because “We have a group of people who entertain a different ideology from the majority rest of Nigerians and they are bent on making their presence felt.”
He said further that it was important to fight the situation and the military action was good idea but that should have been based on the availability of sufficient information, “You need to know who you are fighting”, he said.
Data theft and other fears that might arise as regards the safety of people’s personal information also came to the fore but he gave assurances on the security of the data collected, noting that there were laws on ground to ensure that data theft would not be attractive.
Ipaye said that the establishment of a forensic laboratory was also being worked on.
He also gave a quick response to a Lagos politician and Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, who was on the programme few minutes before him and denied using the military to disrupt work on a Lagos State housing project site.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Justice, said that a Minister of State for Defence, moving around with a military detachment, who gained entry into a building construction site that was supposedly cordoned off while men were at work without been allowed entry would provoke a valid fear from the contractor who had to stop work for a while until the State Government assured him of his safety and the safety of the men at work.
He condemned the action of the Minister as having not been in good faith.
