Robbers from DSS and other reasons

The first time I was robbed, almost a decade now, I was on honeymoon. A burglar broke into our apartment on the top floor, took away my wife’s gold and the money sprayed on us from the party the previous night. Forgive me, if I didn’t take the money to the bank immediately, the party was on a Saturday and we were robbed on a Sunday. For a newly wedded couple, we were in shock.

The police had no intelligence to resolve the case till today. I’ve had other encounters with robberies and I’ve been a victim of serious crimes a number of times, despite my effort to play safe as a Lagos resident.

The truth is we are all vulnerable to crime as residents of cosmopolitan cities anywhere in the world. If you live in Lagos for instance, you must pray-as-you-go, though the government’s efforts to reducing crime rate.

I can remember how my friend, a young lady of 25, who was on his way to work in Lekki, was robbed somewhere in Obalende, Lagos. The street robber took his handbag and shoes. There are many people with serious crime stories that have left them in tatters across the country.

In the last few months, the splurge of crime across the country ranging from categories of crime such as personal crimes, property crimes, inchoate crimes and statutory crimes under which, murder, rape, arson, sexual assault, robbery, assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, theft, drug possession, embezzlement, forgery and others have kept my stomach turning like a woman in difficult labour.

And the worst happened most recently, when some DSS men, our own security agents, were named in a robbery operation at a bureau de change, where N310million was reportedly carted away by these agents. Then, to whom do we turn to for help?

All these informed my decision to accelerate work on my idea to start a crime control initiative that is technology-driven.

The initiative, a mobile-friendly web application that can be accessed through www.crimeonthego.ng will be formally launched tomorrow. This is not another company, it is a community.

The web application, www.crimeonthego.ng is a web platform for people to report their daily encounters with crime situations across Nigerian cities.

It was conceived as a social service and as an empowering tool for citizens to become active participants in crime control and help law enforcement agents to prevent and solve crime without delays. Call it community policing by technology and you may be right.

The features of the site will enable citizens to provide and receive updates on criminal activities in their localities, while at the same time providing useful historical data about crimes in different neighbourhoods and cities across the country.

For clarity, the site is not a police station, it is simply a tool to inform residents about criminal activities in their neighbourhood by crowdsourcing information and in turn, help reduce crime.

For instance, citizens can now report crime on-the-go ranging from burglaries to auto thefts, touting to assaults and robberies with audio, picture and video effect.

Through a built-in technology like geomap, the website will show hot spots of crime in metro cities across Nigeria from Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano and other big cities as part of efforts to help keep our communities safe.

After looking into researches, I found out that crisis of confidence between the citizens and law enforcement agents in Nigeria has been one of the reasons why crime festers in the country. The citizens are often afraid of talking to the police about crime in their neighbourhoods, because they cannot trust the police enough to go to them with useful tip-off or reporting a case. This is the gap that www.crimeonthego.ng  seeks to bridge.

At the opening page of the site you can click drop a tip-off and the confidential information you submit about criminal activities in your area will be fed to the nearest police station to review the intelligence for their own action. That way, gradually we will help build the trust to keep ourselves safe.

Convincingly, after I pondered on a similar social action I undertook  about 17 years ago that got the back of the tobacco industry and forced the industry to a retreat by taking their behemoth billboards and that “Golden Tones” adverts with which they were attracting young people into smoking off our roads and TVs to the signing into law by the federal government a national tobacco control bill that will help save hundreds of lives, I feel there’s a sense in starting this movement to reduce crime through www.crimeonthego.ng.

And this, in the year 2000, my friend, an all-star journalist currently working at The Nation newspaper, Seun Akioye—at the invitation of the late brilliant cop chief and former Commander of Rapid Response Squad in Lagos, Tunde Sobulo— followed the squad on a night operation risking his life on a dangerous voyage just to help Nigerians understand the terror world of robbers. He reported a chilling account of his encounters through the night. Such reportorial duties have disappeared with the years. That’s the kind of information you will get when you hook up to the website.

We believe that small actions can add up to a big difference, so we created www.crimeonthego.ng  to bring people together for small actions that will help keep our communities safe through the application of the five basics of journalism, what, who, where, when, why and how, to help law enforcement agents to follow important signals in crime control.

Of course, we should expect that a platform like this will be a good attraction for law enforcement agents, especially the police to hibernate for intelligence. This is an invitation to you to start the movement with us from tomorrow just with a click.

Follow me on Twitter @adeolaakinremi1