Wednesday 12 September 2012

Bank-assisted robbery ‘operations’


Bank-assisted robbery ‘operations’

Bank-assisted robbery  ‘operations’

Life and Issues with Tunde Thompson
tunsthompson@yahoo.com, 08056180022


It appears that society has so far failed to spare some time and thought in analyzing reports of fatalities, injuries and misery brought upon individuals who, only a few days or even hours before, went to the banks for one transaction or the other. Not only that – in this and some other parts of the world, people have also been killed or maimed permanently during attacks on banking halls by men of the underworld.
However, in view of the relatively improved security measures nowadays at the access points of such facilities, we have heard fewer cases of customers being subjected to “stick – it – up” attacks from those who were sleeping, wenching or wining away their lives, when their mates were busy reading and trying to develop skills deemed vital for their own personal development in various aspects of human existence. Like prostitutes who recently got the support of some members of the National Assembly to get classified also as professionals, armed robbers, who “operate” in and around the banks, may one day wish to be accorded a professional status as well.
After all, you might as well say: “What is deemed good for the gander, is also good for the goose.” To permanently avoid such ridiculous eventualities, is it not about time to start thinking of finding solutions to unfortunate realities like prostitution, armed robbery and unemployment, which sociologists have over the years and practically everywhere, regarded as “social problems”? Perhaps some people had, before now, thought that way and expressed their feelings in some circles, but the point one is making here and now is that the thinking should become deeper and the actions towards solutions, more pronounced,with the results proactively disseminated with a view to manifesting the desirable changes through attitudinal, administrative and behavioral transformations imperative for the general welfare and progress of individuals and the entire country.
In North America, Europe and Asia for examples, such welfare changes were not brought about by simplistically conferring on prostitutes and armed robbers the statuses the “professionals…”which the girls were and probably are still seeking here, but through robust intellectual and legislative actions. One has always believed that the moment the doles and other social welfare benefits statutorily provided for the socially and occupationally challenged persons in the USA and European countries in particular are withdrawn, anti-social activities such as we have around here, will become more pronounced, and life will return to what it was like in the olden days, when the gun was the law, and human life counted very little, if at all, as is sadly becoming our experience here, these days. For some unknown reasons, our governments have not been thinking enough about welfare schemes, even though many of them have seen what obtain in that respect in various other parts of the globe they had visited or read about, as far as the provision of welfare benefits for the people is concerned.
The health insurance scheme, on which we have been nursing hopes for more than 20 years now, is, for example, yet to make the desirable impact, as its successful take-off had been bogged down by factors which have continued to adversely affect its effectiveness. If , truly, “health is wealth”, efforts to ensure that this scheme works well here, ought to be intensified and its standard should be made comparable to what obtains in other countries.
Someone once sounded quite reasonable while offering reasons for the lack of attention by the legislative and executive arms of government to the introduction of welfare schemes for the people: That such steps would make it difficult for the leaders to have enough money left in the till for them to share? All those gargantuan severance packages; unprintable allowances, salaries and other fringe benefits, will definitely make it financially suicidal, as it were, to contemplate spreading the money to other social sectors. One day, something will happen here in that direction, hopefully. However, this topic idea was conceived not as an advocacy exercise for introduction of comprehensive social welfare benefits, but to draw attention to the fact that many people have died or been maimed because they went to the banks a few days earlier to collect some of their monies or jewellery items (especially over the holiday periods),but were viciously attacked on their ways to their work-places and homes,or in their houses, as the cases may be.
One is aware that about 20 years ago, off Ikorodu Road in Lagos, a victim was left in her kitchen in a pool of her own blood; her 10 years old daughter led at gun point to the ward-robe, to show them where her mum kept her jewellery. The point to note, is that she had, before the Christmas holidays, gone to her bank on Lagos Island to collect some of her choice jewels from the vault. How did the robbers know that, if a bank staff member had not told them so? And only six weeks or so ago, an editor of a national newspaper (this one), almost lost his life because robbers came after him on a motor-cycle, asking for “the money”, less than a kilometre from the bank he just left in FESTAC Town, Lagos. How did they know he had just collected money?
You probably know about several other similar dangers to which other bank customers – perhaps even yourself – had been exposed. The Yorubas have a saying: “It is the rat inside the house that tells the external one about what is available for consumption there.” By extension, it is bank workers, especially those posted to the banking halls, vaults and bulk cash offices, that are visibly positioned to know who took what from the banks (cash or kind), and who can therefore accordingly inform thieves/armed robbers, when and where the clients may be ambushed.
This unpleasant development (of bank workers facilitating robberies), needs to be curbed urgently, and it is expected that the banking and other authorities will explore ways of stopping those staff members from further abusing their personal hand sets for such nefarious purposes, because there was no way the robbers would have known what anyone was carrying on him or her,without communication to that effect from a bank-insider.
Some of the workers may well be fifth columnists, planted at the banks by king-pins of the underworld, and should therefore be denied more chances of harming more customers. Or what do you think, please? MAIL BAG Pertinent questions on PHCN Thanks for your piece in the Sept.3 edition of Daily Sun.

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