By Kolawole Ojebisi
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has stated that Nigeria’s heavy investment in surveillance and intelligence-gathering equipment at the nation’s border points has started yielding fruits.
Tunji-Ojo buttressed his claim by narrating how some criminals on the red list of the International Police were arrested at Nigerian airports.
According to the Minister, the criminals declared wanted by some countries in Europe were arrested within two days at the point of entering the country.
According to a statement posted, Wednesday, on the Interior Ministry’s verified X handle, the Minister made the revelation onTuesday at a regional workshop on Maritime Border Security titled “Regional Maritime Border Security in the Context of Counter Terrorism in the Gulf of Guinea,” in Lagos State.
Tunji-Ojo stated that the criminals originated from Italy, the Republic of Ireland and a couple of other countries.
“I can tell you that to a large extent, we have built a robust database, and we are reaping the fruits of that. Now, it will interest you that a couple of weeks ago, within two days, a lot of people on the Interpol and red list were arrested at our airports. It means that these people would have come in.
“One came from Italy, one came from Ireland, the other one, I think, from a couple of countries. These people would have come into Nigeria 18 years ago, but now we know that in terms of our air terminals, they are in sync because it’s integrated into the central system,” he stated.
He said that Nigeria recently started using the API technology which, according to him, was not available before the inauguration of the current administration.
Tunji-Ojo said the API was used to query the passengers’ records, antecedents and travel history.
“Now, we can tell you that Nigeria now has an API solution. We never had that before now. Before now, we were one of the few countries without an API solution, without the opportunity for our immigration officers to pre-profile people coming into Nigeria, not being able to query their background, query their record system, query their antecedents and their travel history.
“We never had that capacity before President Bola Tinubu came on board, but today, I tell you, NIS has that, so if you’re coming into Nigeria today, before you come, we know everything about you.
“We’ve queried you, we know where you’re coming from, and we can tell from their aspect, we’re now fulfilling our international obligations to our international colleagues by being able to uphold the tenets of UN resolution of the API solution that we have at the moment,” he stated.
