Following the introduction of the Biometrics Central Motor Registration BCMR by the Nigeria Police Force recently, Nigerian motorists had within the week been faced with another burden as motorists have been enforced to go through it in order to cub crimes and terrorism.
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However, motorists are presently undergoing biometric capturing in order to get the new driver's licenses as stipulated by the Federal Roads Safety Corps' (FRSC) commands across the country.
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The Nigeria Police, Public Relations Officer Frank Mba, recently announced at a press conference in Abuja that it was mandatory for vehicle owners to carry along the BCMR document as part of documents that they need to drive on Nigerian roads for security reasons. CSP Frank Mba.
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However, security experts who spoke with Saturday Vanguard opined that the move will amount to another rounds of burden on motorists, while expert believes the data needed would ordinarily be at the disposal of any government agency.
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Dr.Ona Ekhomu the President of the association of industrial security and safety operators of Nigeria, in a chat with Saturday Vanguard bares his mind on the issue as he tagged such move by the Nigeria Police Force as unnecessary and superfluous registration.
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His words: "The Nigeria Police force is not a motor vehicle licensing authority such as the State governments or the Federal Road Safety Commission FRSC. It is a criminal investigative agency charged with detecting perpetrators of crime and prevention of crime from being committed. The Police BCMR scheme is an unnecessary and superfluous registration programme that may not contribute significantly to detecting terrorists, kidnappers and armed robbers, or other violent criminals that the scheme aims at.
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The Police have the powers to search the databases of any federal or state agency in the course of carrying out criminal investigations or incident investigations. Without doubt, the biometric data that the Police aim to capture already exists and is under the control of some government agency and is quite accessible to the police agency.
Well there are so many things that are necessary in this country that our police do all the time.
Let's hope that change very soon!