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But it was obvious that what worked in Chief Odunukwe’s favour was the fact that as a billionaire, he was regarded as a citizen who is entitled to all the rights and privileges Nigerian citizenship conferred and these include the right to life, right to dignity, right to personal liberty and the ‘right to be protected by the state. But sadly, for every one-off celebrated Odunukwe case, there are scores of other victims of cybercrimes who as subjects as opposed to citizens, don’t have access to Assistant-Inspector-General of Police’s office Zone 2 command and by inference lose the associated rights of citizenship.
The reality today is that most hardworking Nigerians without access to those in power are never treated as citizens but as subjects. They are denied of freedom of worship, of right to dignity, right to life or right to state protection. Evidence abounds in the numbers of subjects periodically attacked, maimed, killed or uprooted from their ancestral home to IDP camps while government embarked on operations with meaningless names.
Of course, you cannot miss those the state considers as citizens and deserving of state protection. When you see those being sandwiched on the high ways by a number of police vehicles with AK-47 wielding police men, residential houses with permanent presence of policemen or a lonely woman being followed to the market by a policeman, you will be right to conclude they are musicians, motor dealers, indicted politicians or governor’s mother in-law or niece.
But if you are confused about making a distinction between citizen and subjects in the approach to fighting cybercrime by our security bodies and the banking institution where most of cybercrimes take place, let me share with you dear readers the experience of another reader of this column, as reproduced below, when he took a cybercrime petition to the banks, police, EFCC and Alagbon Crime Unit late last year.
“We have this hardworking young lady from one of the north central states, the reader wrote, that lived with us for close to five years during which time she learnt some trades including fashion designing. Since she didn’t need to buy anything apart from sending money to her parents occasionally, the bulk of her money was saved for her. Following her plan to open shop and bring two of her five out-of-school junior brothers to Lagos to start school, we paid her total savings of N1m (one million naira) to her GTB account in October last year. Unfortunately, a day after the amount was paid into her account, she was swindled by one David Eze, a boyfriend she claimed to have met on Facebook and one Okoh Vera, David Eze had introduced to her as his mother, the reader concluded.
On October 25, 2023, she sent a petition titled “Fraud by David Eze” to divisional police station near the scene of the crime with copies to her bank, GTB and Access and Zenith, the banks through which David Eze channelled this particular cybercrime proceeds.
She stated in the petition that David Eze, her Facebook boyfriend directed her to send the sum of N1,045,000 (one million and forty five thousand naira) to Okoh Vera, her mother he claimed was shot by armed robbers.
She gave details of the account numbers and telephone numbers of the swindlers as follows:
1. Of the amount, she paid the sum of N635,000 (six hundred and thirty five thousand naira to Ifeanyi Okeagu, with Zenith bank account number 4206031565 and the sum of N410,000 (four hundred and ten thousand naira) to Okoh Vera, with Access bank account Number 1654011277, as directed by Eze, her Facebook boyfriend.
Telephone Numbers
(a) David Eze +17579827671 and 08148098598
(b) Vera Okoh 09137971902
The petition was however turned down by both the Alagbon Crime Unit and EFCC office in Ikoyi where according to him officials of both bodies who claimed they don’t handle fraud cases below N10 million barred their entry.
For a state that protects the interest of its people as citizens, this petitioner had thought there were no ambiguities in the case in view of stated government public policies.
First, since it was impossible to open an account without meeting the conditions set by these three banks which included submission of ‘a valid government issued identification, (National Identity Card, Driver’s licence or international passport), passport photograph and valid proof of residence including utility bill issued within the last three months, identification of a fraudsters by banks would not be difficult.
And for the police, tracking the fraudsters should also not be difficult since all telephone subscribers are expected to have their numbers linked to their NIN number especially with the Nigerian Communication Commission’s last December directive to all telecommunication operators to bar phone lines of unlinked subscribers.
But they were wrong. The periodic visits to the police station and the three banks since last October by the petitioner and her boss who by our conceptualization, are at best regarded as subjects, have always been “we are working on it”. It was even claimed one official of one of the banks spoke of the need to protect the identity of their client since there was no evidence the lady was forced to transfer the money to his account at gun-point. He might be right on that score.
But that is exactly because we are not treated as citizens by our government. And when a state fails to perform its responsibilities of protecting its people’s right to life, right to dignity and right to personal liberty, the state loses the right to expect its citizens to faithfully implement their duties to the state. It should therefore not come as a surprise that many frustrated Nigerians are not only not ready to die for their country, they in fact routinely sabotage the state by breaking laws through tax evasion, voters’ apathy, refusing to protect public properties, have empathy and compassion for others and take responsibility for their actions.