A strategic security consultant, Max Gbanite on Tuesday described the introduction of the Biometric Central Motor Registry (BCMR) as a “strategic stratagem of national security”.
He said “I think it’s good for the national security of our country, especially now that the enterprise called terrorism is everywhere in the world. We need to be able to trace vehicles and track the movement of vehicles within the country”.
He however questioned the policy framework that gives the police the right to charge Nigerians money to register vehicles or biometrics insisting that “it does not exist in the police environment”.
He also noted that the charging of fees for the registration “subtly exists in the Federal Road Safety Corporation (FRSC) because it is a statutory body that have been asked to register vehicles, to give us our driver’s license and in exchange you have to pay them” adding that “the payment you make to them goes to the national tax board and revenue”.
The FRSC, according to Gbanite is established as a revenue collection agency given the mandate to do such things.
Gbanite, who was speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, noted that the idea of vehicle registration “have been tinkered upon since 2007” stressing that “it was discussed at the latter part of the Obasanjo regime and was discussed in full during the era of Umaru Yar’adua ”.
He further said that the late president “gave his tacit approval” revealing that it was going to be “housed by the FRSC”.
He berated the high cost of obtaining the new driver’s license and vehicle registration, describing it as “expensive for the common man”.
He called for the introduction of a policy formulation that houses all these data and have a body of management to manage these data.
The body, he added will “enable any security agencies the opportunity to access this data as when needed in the course of their investigation”.
He insisted that the data collection can be done by the FRSC and forwarded to the central data management centre for other agencies to access.