Using high tech to secure developing countries
The progress the Nigerian police have made so far in apprehending and processing the perpetrators of the April 2018 armed robbery in Offa, Kwara State, is perhaps a testament to the usefulness of high tech in fighting crimes in general, and in a developing country, in particular. Whenever I watch the progress of the investigation on YouTube, I am impressed by the way it is handled, and subconsciously I tell myself that the leadership of President Buhari is at work, giving the police what they need to keep the country safe. I also tell myself that the diligent process followed by the IG is a reflection of how President Buhari will keep Nigeria secure. After all, with this government, it is about keeping the country secure, fighting corruption, and addressing the issues surrounding unemployment and economic empowerment.
The five ring leaders of the Offa armed robbery have been caught and are in police custody. Seventeen others connected with the crime are also in police custody. The robbery claimed the lives of 33 innocent people, including ten policemen and twenty citizens who were in a nearby shopping center, witnessing the crime in action and protesting. Four of the five ring leaders of the armed robbery incident are natives of Oro in Kwara State. The event will definitely bring shame to the families of these robbers, as well as to the entire Oro town. No honest person listening to the confessions of the robbers will doubt that the ring leaders have some relationships with the Senate President and the governor of Kwara State, although these people have denied knowing the robbers!
This column is about everyday technology; so let’s see how technology has helped in apprehending the robbers. First of all, there was the closed-circuit television, or CCTV, for short. The CCTV surveillance camera captured some of the scenes of the robbery live for everyone to see. You could actually see the robbery in action. Secondly, there is the YouTube, which enables some broadcast of the events in a means that is accessible to anyone on the globe, as long as she has Internet service on her smartphone or computer; you only need to google “Offa robbery.” Moreover, the basic YouTube platform is free of charge. Capturing and parading the robbers in public, with life broadcast on YouTube, will have deterring effects, because of the shame it brings to the robbers, who never expected to be caught, and the backlash from their communities, coupled with the implicit promise of apprehending future criminals.
However, the security problem in a country like Nigeria is massive and it requires a tough solution. Of course, effective solution will start from having enough policemen on the streets which is currently a problem, beefing up the country’s intelligence portfolio, bringing to justice everyone that is remotely connected with crimes, and ensuring incorruptible judiciary. Zero tolerance for illegal gun and fire arms acquisition must be a serious component of any package for keeping the country secure.
Besides CCTV, other high tech platforms may be needed to help the president solve the country’s security problems. For example, the idea of massive deployment of facial recognition technology (FRT) should not be off the table. Although I am not an advocate of human rights violation, I do believe that tough situations require tough measures. In terms of security, I think China will be an excellent model for Nigeria. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, I don’t think China has more than a handful of gun violence in an entire year. Yet, Nigeria, with barely one quarter the population of China, has a crime rate that is in order of magnitude higher than that in China. From the ground, it is really not high technology that has kept China safe, but these days, it seems the need has arisen to maintain the safety status quo by massively deploying FRT. An FRT product marketed by Amazon (USA), called Rekognition, can recognize the faces of 100 people in a crowd at once.
The FRT can be deployed in banks, airports, garages, markets, office buildings, and so on. With the massive deployment of FRT in China, coupled with the usually lower costs of gadgets from there when compared with the West, it is not inconceivable that Nigeria would head east for its FRT solutions.
Of course, FRT has its problems. The accuracy of FRT and virtually all artificial intelligence (machine learning) tools depends on the data on which they are trained. Biases of the developers will eventually show up in the tools they develop. For example, because current FRT tools have focused on white (and perhaps yellow) people, the most popular FRT apps, such as those developed by Microsoft, IBM, and Megvii of China are grossly inaccurate for identifying the faces of people with dark skin. This means that FRT tools developed in China for the Nigerian market has to be trained accordingly. Unfortunately, unlike their counterparts in the West, it does not appear that many vendors of Chinese FRT tools have addressed the crucial issue of bias.