Deploying Electronic Roadside Vehicle Identification Technology to Intercept Small Arms and Ammunition on Nigeria Roads

The challenge of insecurity of life and property in Nigeria has assumed a frightening dimension. The security situation keeps degenerating daily in spite of government’s acclaimed effort to contain the situation. This implies that Nigeria of today has a complex security management challenges to handle in order to liberate her citizens from the bondage of insecurity of lives and property, ranging from kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy, suicide bombing, ritual murders and human parts selling. The arms being used in perpetuating some of these criminal acts are conveyed by the criminals using our roads. These security lapses are still possible in spite of huge security personnel presence on Nigeria road checkpoints. This implies that the present system of “stop and search” operation is defective and inefficient to handle current security dynamics. To ensure effectiveness of roadside policing, there is need to carry out this “stop and search” operation using electronic security system. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to present a model archetype that would be capable of sweeping through commercial and private vehicles on the move automatically using Wireless Sensor Networks, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETS), OCR, transponders linking all sensitive security observatories to a central data base for verifications, security alerts to the security agencies for prompt action and national security control. The paper presents a data base network and communications architecture from a roadside observatory through to the computer control room and then security personnel on duty. The present practice of stop and search fails to capture most vehicles conveying sensitive and dangerous security exhibits such as chemical, small and light arms. Moreover the present system is cumbersome, stressful, time consuming thus reducing the desired reliability, accuracy of roadside policing