Nigeria - countering theft and vandalism

Nigerian Police Seek to Work With Telecom Operators

The Nigerian police are urging members of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) to help find a lasting solution to the vandalization of telecom facilities in the country.

ALTON membership includes all types of telecom operators in Nigeria.

At a public forum on quality of service held in Abuja over the weekend, Commissioner of Police Abubakar Sardauna, speaking on behalf of Inspector General of Police Mike Okiro, urged telecom operators to team up with police and other security agencies to form a joint task force to address issues surrounding vandalization and security breaches of telecom facilities.

A call for greater telecom infrastructure security was also made at the conference last year, the police executive noted, adding that vandalization and breaches scare away potential investors and exacerbate poor quality of service.

Problems facing base stations and other infrastructure include the theft of generators and diesel tanks, and the siphoning of fuel from tanks. The problems, according to a statement from Okiro, are products of factors such as poor communications with host communities, absence of adequate physical security, use of poor-quality materials to secure the stations, low security fences and a lack of security posts.

Police executives are therefore calling for a national policy on security for telecom infrastructure and a law to standardize the provision of physical security by operators.

"The Nigerian Police under my administration has been collaborating with the all levels of government and major stakeholders to create, maintain and promote the context within which relevant government institutions, corporate organizations and all segments of the civil society can better play their part in preventing crime," Okiro noted in a statement delivered at the Abuja event by Sardauna.

Telecommunications, he stressed, is one of the sectors whose activities are fundamental to the realization of the current administration's economic agenda of taking Nigeria to the league of top 20 economies in the world.