A tech expert and Chief Executive Officer, Start Innovation Hub, Hanson Johnson, has condemned the act of labeling young tech talents as criminals by security agencies in Nigeria without conducting proper investigation.
Johnson who kicked against this act in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State on Monday, described the constant harassment and arrest of these young tech-savvy individuals as mistaken identity.
The tech expert while referring the talents as “Tech Bros and ‘Tech Sis’ regrets that the society at large and many security operatives have failed to spot the legitimate work the young professionals were doing, and often mistake their success for illicit activities, leading to public harassment and unjust treatment.
He said: “Before now, wealth was seen as something you attain only after a certain age. Today, information is everywhere, and young people are using it to improve their lives.
‘’There are more intelligent ways to fish out bad people. You don’t have to harass someone and jail the person and then later you now apologize, ‘oh sorry, we thought you were this kind of person.
“We see that even when you have proved beyond every reasonable doubt that you are not one of those people, they still harass you and extort from you”
According to Johnson, there was need to educate security personnel on how they should conduct their duties based on intelligence and not on suspicion, stressing that the fact that few bad eggs misuse the access was not an excuse to call all tech-savvy youths criminals.
In his words: “Security personnel should be able to distinguish between those who are genuinely contributing to the tech industry and those who are not So education, not just on the part of the young people alone, but also for the security operatives will also help solve this problem’’ , Johnson asserted.
