The House of Representatives yesterday ordered an investigation into the alleged failure of the Video Surveillance and Close Circuit Television Camera projects of the Federal Government.The contract for the projects, known as Public Security Communications System, was awarded in the “early part” of the administration of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in the initial sum of $470million under a finance agreement between the government and the China Export Bank.The contract was awarded to ZTE Nigeria Limited.In a resolution in Abuja, the House observed that though the projects had been completed and handed over to the government since 2012, “no criminal activity has ever been detected through the security cameras.”The resolution followed a motion moved by a member from Akwa Ibom State, Saviour Friday-Udoh, who complained that the purpose of installing the CCTV cameras had been defeated if they could not assist in detecting crime.He informed the House that the CCTV cameras were installed in major cities, including Abuja and Lagos.He recalled that there were other contracts to install 2,000 digital solar-powered cameras, 1,000 each in Abuja and Lagos.Friday-Udoh added that the contracts also included the installation of 37 switch rooms; MW backbones; 37 Coalition Emergency Response System; 38 Video Conference Subsystem; 37 E-Police System; six Emergency Communication Vehicles; and 1.5 million subscriber lines.The lawmaker noted that after spending such a huge amount in in a bid to contain the wave of insecurity in the country, the cameras had remained useless almost two years of the completion of the projects.His prayer, which the House unanimously endorsed on Wednesday, read, “Mandate the Committees on ICT, Public Safety and National Security to investigate the failure of the Video Surveillance and Close Circuit Television Cameras to detect criminal activities in Nigeria’s cities and report back to the House within two weeks.”The House also passed another motion bearing on security at the nation’s airports.The motion sought to investigate the “pilfering of luggages” at the airports, particularly the international airports.A member from Benue State, Mr. Hassan Saleh, who moved the motion, told the House that there had been many reported cases lately.“This is causing serious embarrassment to us as a country.“Passengers often have their luggage tampered with at the airports and nothing is being done about it”, he added.The session, which was presided over by the Speaker, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, passed the motion in a majority voice vote and referred it to the Committee on Aviation for investigation.”
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 02:27:23 +0000
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