Jimson Olufuye, former President, African Information Communication Technology Alliance (AfICTA) has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for approving deployment of drone, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in checking banditry, kidnapping
Olufuye gave the commendation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari, recently, at a meeting with the traditional rulers from the South-West agreed to speedy issuance of licence for States requesting the use of drones to monitor forests and other criminal hideouts.
The President also said that the government would install CCTVs on highways and other strategic locations so that activities in some of those hidden places can be exposed, more effectively monitored and open to actionable review.
Speaking on the security measures, Olufuye said it was a welcome development, but the government must first adopt community policing for it to make meaningful impact.
“Monitoring the activities of killer herdsmen, kidnappers and bandits across the country with CCTV is possible, but without security men from the areas they are deployed, it will not yield results.
“There should be a mechanism in place to ensure that the equipments are protected and this requires community policing.”
He recalled that in 2014, CCTVs were installed on the streets of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) but were all vandalised due to poor security.
The ICT expert said that community policing would be more effective if the Police Force recruit more officers from their local communities across the country.
“We are under-policed, we need more police officers engaging in intelligent activities and they need to be respected and be paid well,’’ Olufuye said.
Olufuye said the deployment of drones would make more impact because they could be operated on a mobile platform with censors to pass across information on crimes.