By Wisdom Patrick, Lagos
The Police have said that some of its criminal investigations suffer set-back due to the refusal of some of the major telecommunications companies in the country to cooperate with security agents.
A top Police officer at the Federal Anti-robbery Squad, FEDSARS, at Adeniji Adele area of Lagos Island Local Government, who pleaded anonymity, disclosed this to Political Economist in a chat at the weekend. He added that some of the criminal investigations take more time because some telecommunications companies would not want to supply operatives the necessary information that could facilitate the investigation.
“You raided a suspected armed robbers hide-out and may be recover mobile phones with SIM cards, you now approach the telecommunications company for assistance, but they turn you down out-right, so in that case what do you do?”, he asked rhetorically.
The Police chief who was reacting to the rampant cases of kidnapping in Lagos, stressed that the menace would have been stamped out of Lagos State since, “if companies like MTN, Etisalat would jettison unnecessary protocol and hardline position and join hands with the law enforcement agents in fighting the crime.”
He stated that, the recent case of kidnap of a Chinese national suffered this fate as MTN refused to oblige investigators access to the criminal call logs and system which would make it easy for the Police to locate the position of the criminals and the victims.
“When we went to MTN they refused to give us the call logs. Meanwhile, the kidnappers were using MTN number to communicate with the relatives of the victim, but MTN insised we have to get court order to be able to enter into their system, that is not good enough.”
A former Special Fraud Unit, SFU, chief investigator and now the Commissioner of Police (CP) Rivers State Command, Tunde Ogunsakin, in his comment also said that investigation of some high profile fraud cases have suffered and investigators frustrated because of the activities of some telecommunications companies, especially Etisalat.”
He said when he was heading the department an official complaint about the development was forwarded to the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, to prevail on the concerned telecommunications companies to see reason on why they must assist security operatives in the discharge of their duties.
The Police boss added that, “it was when operatives threatened to arrest officials of Etisalat as accomplice in the crime in one instance that they reluctantly supplied the Police with the information that were needed for the investigation.”
He solicited the cooperation of the telecommunications companies in the fight against crime and criminalities in the country.
