The Chairman, Senate Committee on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FERMA, Senator Gershon Bassey has come out to say that technology is the answer to insecurity in Nigeria.

He recently revealed this while speaking to journalists in Abuja, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, the deployment of technology will be the panacea to bring the situation to a control, even if the efforts being made by FG to tackle the issues economically through the social intervention funds for the youth is also reasonable.

He added that the human factor of policing or securing communities is now obsolete, and not realizing this fact has made Boko Haram, banditry, kidnapping thrive in Nigeria.

His words, “You don’t see or hear of kidnapping in many countries, why? It’s because of technology. Once you have the technology, kidnapping becomes extremely difficult.”

“Why not acquire the technology to reduce kidnapping significantly. In Nigerian states, where technology has been introduced, kidnapping has been virtually eliminated like in my State , Cross River , same with other crimes.”

“There is no doubt whether we have state, federal or local police, they must be properly funded. Nigeria is under-policed, we are far below the international standard when it comes to the ratio of police to citizens. We need to recruit more police.”

“Second, we need to fund not just our police but our security agencies. Like some of my colleagues were saying on the floor of the Senate that we need to have an emergency in security, that emergency must include funding, like the federal government is doing for COVID-19.”

“Let’s go to the fundamentals first. The ones we have, let it work. They other one, like state police, is a medium term issue. You cannot amend the constitution today, it takes process.”

“But in the meantime, Nigerians are having problem, so let address the problem now. If today we have an emergency in security, then we can quickly allocate fund, recruit the personnel and acquire the technology needed within few months.”