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From Molly Kilete, Abuja
The Inspector-General of Police(IGP), Olatunji Disu, Monday, presided over the 11th Meeting of Heads of INTERPOL National Central Bureaus (NCBs) for West Africa holding in Abuja.
The meeting had in attendance NCB heads from sixteen West African nations alongside senior representatives of the INTERPOL General Secretariat and regional security bodies.
In his address, at the meeting, the IGP who listed some of the threats confronting the west-africa sub-region to include Human trafficking, illegal arms deal, drug networks, cybercrime, money launderers, terrorist financiers, and violent extremist groups said they all share one defining characteristic of operating without regard for national borders.
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While noting that the region’s success depends not on any single country’s efforts, but on the speed and quality of partnerships forged across all sixteen member states, the IGP, said Nigeria was well prepared as it has taken concrete steps to curb the menace.
He also said that steins are underway to extending INTERPOL’s I-24/7 secure communications network to border control points and law enforcement institutions nationwide, so that the officer at a land crossing has the same real-time access to critical intelligence as those at headquarters. He reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to Project GEMINI — the systematic uploading and verification of INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database — and pointed to the West African Police Information System (WAPIS) as evidence of what regional data integration, pursued with purpose, can achieve.
He committed Nigeria to three priorities: ensuring universal access to INTERPOL’s key databases across West African border architecture; building coordination mechanisms that enable joint action within hours, not weeks; and investing in the trust and transparency among NCBs that makes meaningful information-sharing possible. Without that trust, he observed, even the most sophisticated systems fall short.
The leader of the INTERPOL delegation acknowledged Nigeria’s investment in hosting and drew attention to what the full attendance of all sixteen NCB heads signified — that across distances and operational pressures, these agencies had chosen to show up together. He challenged participants to leave not with intentions, but with commitments capable of being measured, and to carry into their daily operations a shift from reacting to crime after the fact, to anticipating and disrupting it before harm is done.
The 11th NCB Heads Meeting reaffirms Nigeria’s place at the centre of West African security cooperation and reflects a Force leadership that understands policing in the twenty-first century as an inherently collective endeavour.
