Dear Oku,
Thank you for this comment. Security agencies typically use a technique known as triangulation to track people using their digital footprints. For triangulation to work, you would usually need cell phone towers, routers, or other means of tracking and tracing IP addresses, phone numbers, or social media accounts
Alternatively, after securing a warrant from a judge, they can request such data from your mobile phone and Internet provider, who will then use triangulation or cell-site simulators to track you down and pass your location to the appropriate authorities.
Triangulation and other means of narrowing down your location work almost like science in urban and even rural areas. So, it is not difficult to trace people who live in cities, towns, and villages, once you have their digital footprints.
However, in environments like deserts, forests, and oceans, where humans do not typically make their dwelling and therefore do not leave a digital trace, it can be challenging to track people using triangulation or other modern tracking techniques, which rely on infrastructure that is typically not found in these terrains.
Now, that difficult situation is made even harder when the targets to be located are moving.
For example, Oyo State is roughly the same size as the five Southeastern states combined. And it is a state populated by several forests.
Opara Forest in Oyo, where some cross-border bandits are suspected to operate, is roughly the size of Lagos State. The entire Lagos State is only slightly bigger. Opara Forest is half the size of the whole of Anambra State.
There are no cell phone towers or routers in Opara Forest. Please fact-check me. So, the ability to digitally trace these bandits using triangulation is severely limited.
In fact, in the area around Ogbomosho, where the children were sadly abducted, which are the villages of Ahoro-Esinele, Yawota, and Alawusa, cell phone communications are extremely limited or nonexistent, because telecommunications firms, like MTN, and others, hardly have cell towers in those outlying towns. That’s why it even took a while for the school authorities to alert the Oyo State Government, because there was no network in the area.
This is not limited to Nigeria. There are literally hundreds of small towns in America without network coverage. Believe it or not, millions of Americans still live without internet’s millions. Please fact-check me!
Drones are a good means of reconnoitring extreme environments. However, drones face significant challenges in thick forests, as they can only fly above the ground, and ground visibility is limited or even impossible because the trees obscure their cameras.
Additionally, when these bandits hold children hostage, even if you can somehow find them in the heavily forested areas they operate in, neutralising them poses another risk, because they tend to use their hostages as human shields.
So, Oku, by now, I hope you can appreciate the significant topographical challenges posed by the environment in which these bandits operate. Therefore, I urge you and others making these unfair comparisons to please be patriotic and support our security forces as they do their best in very difficult situations.
Thanks again, Oku, and may God bless you.
Reno Omokri
Ambassador Designate to Mexico. Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #TableShaker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year, 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
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