ACN wants NASS to throw out telephone tapping bill

The Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN) has urged the National Assembly not to pass a bill seeking to authorise e-surveillance of telephone calls by the security agencies, as part of efforts to check the worsening insecurity in the country.In a statement issued in Lagos, on Thursday, by its national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said passing such a bill would amount to giving the security agencies the carte blanche to tap the phones of any citizen on the pretext that it was for security purposes.It said such a law was also capable of breeding dictatorship, as it could easily be abused by the government of the day to target the opposition, or party officials who had fallen out of favour.ACN said what the country needed to tackle the security challenges in the country was to think out of the box, encourage cooperation among the security agencies and fund them adequately, so as to develop their capacity and vision.The party, however, said the ultimate answer to the security challenges facing the nation was the establishment of state police, securing the nation's borders and improving training as well as intelligence gathering.'Since it is said that all security is local, having state police will definitely enhance security across the country. One cannot overstate the importance of deploying security agents to areas with which they are very conversant, either in terms of language or the geographical terrain in which they operate.''It is not for nothing that Russia, for example, will deploy to the United States intelligence officers who have either been educated in the country or understand the way of life of the American people, including their language,'' it said.ACN warns that any law that was capable of compromising the privacy law protecting phone users and interfering with the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Nigerians could only create more problems than it would solve.
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