FACT CHECK: NIN policy HAS NOT reduced kidnapping, banditry

CLAIM: Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, said the introduction of National Identification Number (NIN) into SIM card registration has helped to reduce the spate of kidnapping and banditry in the country to the barest minimum.

VERDICT: FALSE! Kidnapping and banditry have increased astronomically since 2019.

 

FULL STORY: Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, on Thursday, June 3, 2021, said the introduction of the National Identification Number (NIN) by the Federal Government has helped to drastically reduce the spate of kidnapping and banditry in the country.

He made the claim while featuring on the All Progressives Congress (APC) stewardship programme organised by the APC Professionals Forum.

“Go through history and news from the end of September 2019 to 2020, you will discover that even kidnapping and banditry has been reduced to the barest minimum,” Pantami said while praising the policy on compulsory use of NIN for SIM card registration.

The claim by the minister was reported by the mainstream media and online news websites and blogs here, here, here and here.

For a more complete context, Pantami said it was the initiative of his ministry as a regulator that ensured that the National Communications Commission (NCC) issued a directive to telecommunication operators to make registration of sim cards mandatory for end users.

He said: “Security cannot be ignored. Security cannot be compromised because of economic development. We have come up with so many policies in order to support security institutions.

“When I was assigned to supervise the sector on 24 August 2019, unregistered, and partially registered SIMS were being used to perpetrate crime in the country.

“Nobody knew the total number of unregistered SIMS. Within less than 15 days in the office, we have engaged the NCC as a regulator. We have directed them to carry out an audit exercise to enable them to come up with unregistered and partially registered SIMS. They came with around 9.4 million which is enough to populate another country. It was the first time because we didn’t know the total number of unregistered SIMS in the country.

“And we went further to direct NCC, to ensure that by 25th September 2019 – that is only one month and a few days in office – no SIM that is not registered will be on our network. NCC as a regulator implemented that effectively.

“Go through history and news, from the end of September 2019 to 2020, you will discover that even kidnapping and banditry has been reduced to the barest minimum.

“It was the time that hardly you can spend one month or more without hearing about the kidnapping.”

VERIFICATION: Upon his assumption of office for a second term in office, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Pantami as a minister alongside others on August 21, 2019.

Following an audit of the NCC, the minister directed that NCC should deactivate about 9.4 million unregistered and improperly registered SIM cards by 11:59 pm of September 25, 2019.

According to a statement from the NCC on December 15, 2020, telecommunication providers were given two weeks to add valid National Identification Numbers (NIN) to every SIM card registered in the country.

The statement also warned that all SIM cards without a NIN attached will be blocked from December 30 – a date that has since been reviewed many times.

Merriam Webster online dictionary defines “drastically” as “severely or seriously.” Thus, a drastic reduction should mean that the spate of banditry and kidnapping have reduced as said by the minister.

Following the implementation of these policies, did banditry and kidnapping reduce drastically in Nigeria? Not quite!

Checks by Tribune Online showed that banditry and kidnapping increased in 2020 by more than 100% of the 2019 figures. Events recorded between January and April 2021 have equalled the records of banditry and kidnapping in the whole of 2019.

According to a 2021 report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project on political violence and protest around the world, abduction/forced disappearance events in Nigeria “increased dramatically in 2020.”

According to the report titled “Mapping Nigeria’s Kidnapping Crisis: Players, Targets, and Trends,” which covers January 1, 2018, to April 30, 2021, abductions/forced disappearance events in Nigeria were carried out by Fulani ethnic militia and/or pastoralists, the Islamic State (West Africa) and/or Boko Haram, communal militia and unidentified armed group.

ACLED data show that a little less than 150 events of political abductions/forced disappearances were in 2019 while over 350 events were recorded in 2020. Data also showed that about 150 events were recorded in just four months of 2021 – between January 1 and April 30.

Of the five notable mass abductions highlighted by the ACLED report, only one took place before Pantami’s emergence – the February 19, 2018 abduction of 110 students of a girls school in Dapchi.

The mass abductions include the December 11, 2020 abduction of 300 male students of Government Science Secondary School in Kankara in Katsina State, the February 26, 2021 abduction of 300 female students from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe in Zamfara State.

Others are the March 12, 2021 abduction of 210 students and staff of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka and the April 20, 2021 killing of one and abduction of 22 staff and students of Greenfield University at Kasarami Village In Gwagwada both in Kaduna State.

Since then there have been reports of individual, collective and mass abduction carried out by bandits in the country including the about 200 students of Salihu Tanko Islamiyya School in Rafi local government area of Niger State on May 30, 2021; students of Abia State University, Uturu, were on Wednesday, May 5 lecturers of University of Jos among others.

In another analysis, ACLEAD said smaller mass kidnappings now routinely occur in every corner of the country, noting that the estimated 1,100 total number of abducted persons in 2020 is more than double the amount kidnapped at Boko Haram’s height in 2014.

The analysis further stated that “nearly as many people — 2,690 in 2020 — are now being killed in the north-west of the country, the heart of the bandit crisis, as in Boko Haram’s stronghold Borno state, where 3,044 civilians were killed. The violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the north-west.”

Amnesty International in its December 2018 report titled Harvest of Death: Three Years of Bloody Clashes Between Farmers and Herders in Nigeria said 2,802 were killed in 2018, about a year before the minister assumed office.

In another report, the agency noted that at least 1,126 people were killed by bandits in Nigeria in the first half of 2020 alone after documenting an alarming escalation in attacks and abductions in several states in North-West and North-Central, adding that the worst affected are villages in the south of Kaduna State, where armed men killed at least 366 people in multiple attacks between January and July 2020.

At the end of 2020, a total of 937 people were said to have been killed by bandits and 1,972 kidnapped within the period, according to the Kaduna State 2020 Annual Security Report made public by the state Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan in March 2021.

The commissioner also said a total of 323 people were killed and 949 people were kidnapped by bandits in the state between January and March 2021.

Further checks by Tribune Online show that a Wednesday, June 2, 2021 report by The Nation chronicled prominent killing and abductions following “the spike in the activities of ‘gunmen’ across the country in past months, especially with cases of kidnapping for ransom and banditry being reported weekly.”

This spike was corroborated by an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations which says almost 600 civilians were killed across the country and at least 406 abducted by armed groups in April 2021 alone.

CONCLUSION: In spite of the insufficient or lack of government data, the claim that banditry and kidnapping reduced drastically/to the barest minimum in Nigeria is untrue. Available evidence and media reports show contrary.