Who Keeps Records?

Security challenges in Nigeria often take dramatic turns, as they are often viewed through ethnoreligious lens. This prevalence frequently shifts the focus from how to objectively tackle these insecurities to pitching of tribe against tribe, religion against religion. While this has continued to undermine efforts at addressing the nation’s security woes, it has further depleted integration efforts, as different groups are always at crossroads due to negative ethnoreligious profiling.

The gruesome murder of Mrs Funke Olakunri, daughter of Yoruba cultural organisation, Afenifere, leader, while travelling along Ore-Akure expressway on Friday, has been greeted by an admixture of condolences and contrasting stances about her assailants. While some of the deceased’s family members hold that she was shot and killed by Fulani herdsmen, the Police feels that it was a case of indiscriminate bandits’ attack. The identity of the culprits has remained unknown. Although some elder statemen, like national leader of All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu have warned against negative ethnic profiling and using the incident to achieve some hidden political agenda, other people, like the controversial leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu have called on the Yorubas to engage in concrete mass action. While assumptions could end up as right or wrong, facts and figures will go a long way in affirming or nullifying opinions and rumours.

How can the nation approach crimes and insecurities objectively? A diligently updated crime database that records specifics of crimes in terms of dress habits, mode of operation, patterns of attacks will help inform objective conclusions for profiling crimes. It will also help in figuring out the identities of perpetrators and how best to fish them out. That said, it will help in informing policy initiatives on how best to prevent crimes and tackle insecurities. An insight by Tony Blair Institute of Global Change suggests that the call for a crime plan in the United Kingdom was tremendously informed by a meticulously kept crime statistics that recorded crime patterns, its increase, decrease and other significant indices.

In the United States, the National Crime Information Centre (NCIC) does not only help to tackle criminalities, it also helps to recognise trends and effectively come up with workable strategies that will mitigate its rise. Nigeria’s latest crime statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics was for 2017. Two years after, with the spate of insecurities nationwide, there is no reliable crime statistics that can inform effective policing strategies. In 2018, the Nigerian Police announced that a new crime database was being established. Almost a year on, there is still no further information to that effect.

What majorly enriches a crime database are reported offences. The Nigerian Police has to make it easier for people to willingly report crimes without fear of victimisation. Thankfully, modern technological applications can be used to strengthen the culture of crime reporting. There is no gainsaying that these statistics will help monitor, profile and evaluate crime rates.  It will also strengthen the efforts of security personnel in identifying and arresting criminal elements.

For Further Reading, Click: When Statistics Speaks So Little