About a week ago, I had to join a commercial vehicle to Yaba in Lagos, not knowing that that will cost me my Nokia 9300 Communicator. I kept it in the right front pocket of my jeans-style trouser only to discover my phone wasn’t there again by the time I alighted from the vehicle. It was the first of such an experience to me since I rarely enter commercial vehicles. The pickpocket who stole it must have been an expert because I always thought the front pocket of the trouser is always the safest for keeping such things. Maybe the weight of the phone made it easy for him to retrieve it from my pocket without his touching me.

Anyway, I decided to give the thief a call by the time I alighted from the vehicle. Though I did not see any sensibility in doing that, it was the only obvious thing for me to do, especially since I have nothing further to lose. I called my mobile line on the phone and the pickpocket answered the call:

Me: “Excuse me please; you are having my phone with you. Can we discuss how I can have it back?”

Thief: “Huh Umn?”

Me: I am ready to settle you on any amount you want; please you need to return this phone”.

Thief: “Yes…”

Me: “I am a student. If you check the phone, you will see many information there related to school works”.

Thief: “Humm hnu…”

Me: “Please where can we meet so that we can discuss?”

Thief: “Humn Hmmn…

When I discovered that the guy was not ready to talk to me, I had to cut the call and move since I was already late for my appointment.

I gave my number a call later in the evening, but the number was not reachable again. I tried later in the night and the following morning, but could not reach my number again. The grim reality is that my phone is gone. Thus end the story of another stolen phone.

I had tried to recover through Glo’s Centre my Globacom’s SIM card that was stolen with the phone, but met another brick there. As of this afternoon, what they told me at their Opebi’s centre was that the 08055… series of lines are not available and so I cannot recover my SIM yet. I was told to wait again till next week.

The truth is that mobile phones theft will still continue as long as we have thieves in the societies, though we can do some things to discourage them. It is no use blaming people who lost their phones for being stupid, as that can happen even to the smartest of individuals. Sometimes, your phone can be taken away from you at gun-point. What do you do about that? That is why sometimes I prefer to take taxis whenever I am returning home in the night and I am not using my car. I thought during the day will be safer, not reckoning with pickpockets. To discourage phone thefts, these few measures will help. If you know of any other, kindly add it as a comment.

How To Discourage Mobile Phone Thefts

1. Don’t buy used phones, as most used phones are stolen phones. If there are no buyers of stolen phones, then the thieves will be discouraged.

2. Through the co-operation of network operators in the country, reported stolen phones can be barred from operating on their networks by blocking the IMEI number of the reported phone on their networks. It is a little bit sad that Nigerian GSM operators are not yet offering this valuable service to their customers at this age. I don’t know any operator that is offering this service yet. We need it in order to curb the crime of phones theft.

3. Always lock your phone with the security feature on the phone. This will give the thief a little difficult time to operate the phone. Of course I applied the security feature on my stolen phone, which actually locks the phone after 5 minutes of inactivity. I learnt from a friend, who is a popular phone technician at Ikeja that mobile phones like Nokia posed no problem of unlocking even to beginners in the business of unlocking phones. He told me that if it had been a Pocket PC that was stolen from me, it will be a little difficult for the thief to unlock it and I might be able to trace the phone by reporting early at the few phone repairs centre in Computer Village that repairs Pocket PCs, which also include him. Having heard him said that, I concluded that it will be a waste of time trying to trace the stolen Nokia 9300 Communicator.

4. Finally, if you use expensive phones, avoiding taking commercial transports except taxis. If you must take commercial transports, then go out with a cheaper phone which you are supposed to have beside the expensive one.

Nokia 9300 Communicator