By Chris Onokpegu

It is said in the school of thought that there is no place in the world where there are no crimes but the level of crime in countries differs.

Some people also believe that crimes are higher in highly populated countries than the others but that argument can be challenged because many developed countries have less crime rates than smaller and developing countries.

Meanwhile, in the past, Nigeria used to experience very low crime rates. In fact, in those days, Police don’t move around with rifles or pistols but batons. And then, it used to be only Police unlike what is obtainable today where you have so many uniformed outfits and yet the crime rate is on the high.

Investigation has shown that many factors are responsible for the crime rates which can actually be eliminated or reduced to the barest minimal. Below are some of the causes and likely solutions:

Basic Needs
In most countries where crime rates are low, the government provides its citizens with the basic needs. They ensure that their citizens are comfortable and have those basic needs and some also give stipends to enable them to take care of petty things.

Some people get caught for just petty crime because of starvation but if things are within their reach, they wouldn’t have thought of committing such crime in the first place. Most countries ensure that foods are not only cheap but affordable.

They also ensure there is constant availability of water supply, electricity, shelter, free health care and scholarship for anyone that is interested in furthering his or her education but they ensure that post-primary (secondary) is the least their citizens must attain. And after getting a scholarship and getting employed, the government deducts its money from the person’s salary.

Education
Recently, the current President of African Development Bank, AFDB, Mr. Akinwunmi Adesina said ,”A global Nigeria must invest heavily in education… The greatest investment Nigeria can make is education especially higher education.”

It is also said in the local parlance that, “If education is expensive, try ignorance,” that seems to be what we have tried over the years and it has caused us a lot of damage if we make reference to so many incidents in the past.

However, there is no doubt that education is the best way to go and it will definitely go a long way to curb crime in the country. No enlightened or educated person will brandish cutlass, weapons to kill anybody, or allow themselves to be used by some wicked politicians to cause arms to other people just to get to power when they are hiding their own children abroad.

Also, educated persons are more independent and innovative and can create jobs for themselves and others hence reducing the burden on government. And if they are engaged in positive ventures, it will be difficult for anyone to engage them in negative ventures or be thinking of how to carry out criminal activities especially when they must have been exhausted from the day’s job.

*Provision and creation of job opportunities
We gathered from a reliable source that in one of the French-speaking African countries, the government ensures that anyone running a business in that country must engage its citizens hence unemployment rate is very low in that country.

Nigeria with its large population needs to adopt such strategy to reduce unemployment rate in the country. We can’t afford to allow people to be bringing their citizens to work and make money from Nigeria and at the end of the day, they don’t even pay tax or give back to the community where they are operating from.

Secondly, everybody cannot work in the office and because of how white-collar job workers are being treated and rated, many people are aspiring to leave the village and work in offices hence abandoning the farms for aged people , who can do little or nothing to feed the whole country.

However, the government can make working in the farms more lucrative by introducing mechanised farming. They can also ensure that farmers retire to their beautiful abode, maybe two bedroom apartments with all the amenities working, give them car loans and others. If this is done, many youths will like to go back to the farm.

We can do crop and animal farming just like what former Governor of Delta State, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa did. If this is done across the country, the groundnut pyramid will return, cocoa in the west, rubber plantation in the south south, palm oil in the east, etc will be back. The Ministry of Agriculture can also build silos across the country and before we know it, we are exporting food produces and feeding well as a nation.

In Cote d’Ivoire, there is a deliberate farming policy in place. They plant cocoa, banana, yam, cassava, palm-kernel, etc in large quantities hence they don’t experience food shortage let alone have hike in prices, they are leaving and eating well with enough availability of surplus food produces. They depend on farm products for exports, they don’t have oil. Watch out for more on Cote d’Ivoire in our subsequent editions.

So, drafting our young men and women who are very energetic to the farms could just change the narrative for the country instead of what is being experienced today where they are channeling them into wrong and illicit activities like yahoo, kidnapping, gambling, robbery, touting, prostitution, etc.