By Doka Dennis and Waziri Mahdi Isa
An internationally renowned Academic at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Professor Samaila Usman Dakyes has used locally-sourced materials to create anti-copy, and thermal inks to tackle documents forgery, theft, and counterfeiting.
This was made known during an inaugural lecture titled: Forensic Graphics: An R & D Approach To Curbing Document Theft In Nigeria, held on the 26th of May, 2021 at the Assembly Hall, A.B.U main campus.
The lecture was attended by top management staff, students of the University, and stakeholders in the security subsector.
In his speech, Professor Dakyes said that most official instruments or highly valued paper documents used by government and the private sector in Nigeria are vulnerable to being counterfeited by fraudsters since little attention is given to document protection. He said that existing protection had become obsolete due to advances in security research and development.
“To counter this problem, series of experiments with different locally sourced materials were conducted. Some of the materials used for the experiment include: Euphoria and calototorpis (procera) latexes, honey, and paraffin wax” the Prof said.
In his opening remarks, Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Kabiru Bala praised Prof Dakyes for this wonderful invention and several other contributions, not just to the university but to the nation as a whole.
The VC however regretted that official and important documents like school certificates, and money, are easily forged in Nigeria.
Professor Dakyes observed that the consequences of corruption and organized crime include enormous loss of government revenue, undermining national development, damage of national imagine and so on. If put to use, the ink will go a long way to curb the menace of document theft in Nigeria.
“If the results of the experiment are fully put to use, agencies like Nigeria Security Printing and Minting, TAWADA Nigeria limited and government could produce and control the use of the inks, thereby achieving some significant level of success in the area of indigenous security printing material development for document protection in line with the concept of 80 percent local content advocated by government” he said.
In his remarks, the Vice Chancellor in an answer to a request by Prof. Dakyes soliciting for grant to further his research, stated that they are hoping to get a grant allocation from the TETFund.