NIGERIA COMPUTERS STOLEN AND SOLD AT COMPUTER VILLAGEallAfrica.com: Nigeria: A Village of CrimesA Village of Crimes
The News (Lagos)

November 1, 2004
Posted to the web October 26, 2004

Adeola Daramola

Criminals Invade Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos, Offering Cheap Computers, GSM Handsets And Accessories

It is considered Nigeria's Silicon Valley. But unlike Santa Clara Valley (the real Silicon Valley located in the southern part of San Francisco in the United States of America) where numerous computer firms manufacture millions of computers, Nigeria's Computer Village at Ikeja in Lagos State merely sells computers and handsets, and their accessories. The market provides legitimate earnings for a wide array of business people - computer and handset dealers, technicians, food and water vendors, cobblers and business centres.

But Computer Village has also assumed notoriety as a haven for criminals and ready market for their illegal transactions. The market runs from 8 a.m to 6 pm. daily.

Within the period, marketers of second-hand handsets believed to have been stolen, dominate the environment.

Segun Ogunsina, resident of Ketu, a suburb of Lagos, asserted that a greater percentage of computers and handsets stolen from their owners are taken to the Computer Village and resold as fairly used items. He narrated his ordeal: "My former handset, Samsung A800, was stolen in a bus. The following day, I was at the Computer Village to buy another handset when I saw a man who displayed about five fairly-used handsets of different brands. To my surprise, among the displayed handsets was mine. When I raised an alarm, his colleagues shielded him from arrest and allowed him to run away." Prince Mac Eze, president of the Computer Dealers Association, CDA, at the POWA Shopping Complex in the market admitted that bad eggs populate the village's business community. Eze narrated the experience of a woman who was robbed in her home of her handset, among other items. A few days later when the woman came to the Computer Village to buy a replacement, she was taken aback to see one of the robbers manning a kiosk she had stopped over to examine some handsets. The suspect had actually wielded a gun most menacingly while the woman was being robbed.

According to Eze, the sight of the robber was so shocking that the woman collapsed. While she was being revived, the suspect disappeared.

In June this year, six armed robbery suspects were arrested in the market by the police. Police sources said the suspects, acting on insider information, laid siege on the market awaiting the arrival of a vehicle said to be bringing computer accessories worth N15 million. But some eagle-eyed traders suspected their movements and alerted the police who apprehended them.

Genuine traders at the Village are uneasy about the activities of the criminals. They complained of how the miscreants lure away prospective buyers with lower prices.

One handset dealer, Macdonald Chuks, told TheNEWS that whereas a new set like the Nokia 3310 sells for about N9500 in a true shop, the "boys", as they are called, would fling it for about N4000. Some traders at the Computer Village legitimise the dubious transactions by making genuine receipts available to the criminals.

But some traders who sell cheap swore their transactions are above board. One Morufu brandished receipts he declared were genuine and a score of fairly-used imports he said came from Dubai. When asked of the price of a Samsung A800 in his custody, Morufu agreed to sell it for N3,000. This surely is a ridiculous cut from the normal price of about N16,850. "We usually sell our wares at give-away prices because they are imported enmasse," Morufu explained away the stunning difference.

Some of the traders alleged that local government officials prop the "boys" up in the perpetration of their criminal acts. The criminals, dreaded by the traders, are said to be the tool of coercion employed by an indepedent tax collection outfit which collects all manner of taxes on behalf of the council from traders and landlords within the area. The "boys" enforce strict compliance. But an official of the Ikeja local government, where the Computer Village is located, denied the allegation and passed the buck to the police. He agreed the market is so infested with crime that the criminals operate there even in daytime.

The absence of an organised association in the market boosts the activities of the hoodlums. The market is currently polarised along ethnic lines with the Igbo traders accusing their Yoruba counterparts of domination and high handedness. Eze took the magazine through the history of the dispute. In 2000, one Mr Oloko proposed the idea of forming a broad-based, non-tribal association to be named Computers and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria, CAPDAN, in the market. But according to the CDA president, "the Yoruba went behind our back and register the association with eight trustees, all of them Yorubas.

So it is not acceptable to us. Since then we have dissociated ourselves from the association. For now each complex has its own association without an effective umbrella for the market.

The criminals are proving quite a hard nut to crack even for the police. At the Area 'F' Command, Ikeja, a police officer said constant raids on the hoodlums at the market have not deterred them. "We keep on raiding them and they keep on resurfacing. We would have been able to deal with the situation better if the market is organised," he said.