Abuja — The Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat) Ltd Tuesday said it is working with the Nigerian police to put in place a modernised public safety network with the use satellite to combat crime in the country.

Managing Director of NigComSat, Ahmed Rufai, made this known during a courtesy a visit of a group called the Jonathan Youth Vanguard to the company headquarters in Abuja to have full knowledge of the electronic voting solution and other technologies designed by the company and relate same to President Jonathan.

The technology, a code division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method utilized by various radio communication technologies which, according to Rufai will first be deployed to fully cover the federal capital territory before introducing it to other part states of the federation.

Rufai said there are about five of the CDMA towers in Abuja and additional three will be needed to fully cover the city with one each already built in Utako, Yanyan, and Kubwa, and two others are coming up in Kuje, and Gwagwalada areas of Abuja.

He said, "In the next three months, we will able to provide modernized public safety network for effective policing because policing and crime control thrive on their capacity to gather intelligence, track and process information. If you don't have this capacity, then the criminals are a step ahead of you. So when you have the foreknowledge of a crime, there is safety. They say to be forewarned is to be forearmed," he said.

Stating that the Abuja version of the CDMA will be commissioned in the next months, Rufai said the police in the federal capital city will be enhanced to monitor and track incidences that are of interest to them.

He said, "When we are able to that, Nigerians will be able to sleep with their eyes closed, because before a criminal strike, the police should have stricken first. They should be able to take some proactive action of what we call a speed call control rather than allowing crime to be committed. May be the victim is almost 70 per cent dead before the police would have arrived the scene of the incidence. We now want the police to stop a crime before it is committed."

The President General of the Jonathan Youth Vanguard group, George Turner, who commended the effort made by NigComSat in the area of communications technology development achieved said the money invested by the federal government in the company was never a waste.

While stressing on the need to partner with the company in the area of capacity building for at least 50 Nigerian youths in each of the 774 local government in the country, the leader of the group believed that the development would address the problem of unemployment to a very large extent in the country.