A Village of Crimes.

(From The News (Nigeria) - AAGM)

Byline: 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.