LAGOS OCTOBER 4TH (URHOBOTODAY)-The Deputy Senate president, Ovie Omo-Agege, has said that Nigeria has the lowest rate of kidnapping, armed banditry and other related crimes in the world, adding that some external detractors are blowing insecurity in the country out of proportion.
Omo-Agege made the statement during a stakeholders’ national discourse on security and economic development in Abuja on Tuesday, October 1, Vanguard reports.
Omo-Agege was represented by his senior special assistant on strategic security, Colonel Melvin Usman (retd).
According to the deputy Senate president, foreigners hype insecurity scenario of Nigeria more than what happens in their country.
“No doubt, if we take issues one by one, we would certainly find one teething; sometimes lingering problems.
“But the fact remains that many of our detractors as a nation take undue interest in blowing our problems out of proportion. Even in cases wherein their own countries, those vices are worse, they stand on mountain tops to disparage Nigeria while speaking of theirs as pockets of deviant behaviour.”
“A very recent example was the United Nations Rapporteur Agnes Callamard‘s report of violence in Nigeria which unfairly described the country as ‘a pressure cooker of violence.
“Take the issue of security, particularly kidnapping and armed robbery. Recent statistics show that in 2017 in the United States. There were 100 robberies per 1000 population. In England and Wales, it was 127. In France 147, and in “very peaceful” Sweden 87.
“In Nigeria for the same period, there were 3,527 cases of armed robbery recorded in the country (Federal Bureau of Statistics).
“If you compute this figure with a very conservative population of 150 million, what we have is 0.024 robberies per 1000 for the period under review.
“Even if we factor-in a generous margin of error for unreported cases, it would still hover around one robbery per 1000 population.
“Nigeria, therefore, has far fewer cases of this vice than all these nations given as examples. In the same token, Mexico is acclaimed to be the world’s headquarters of kidnap-for-ransom, followed by the United States,” he disclosed.