By Chinelo Obogo
In an effort to bolster national security in the face of festering insecurity, the Federal Government, on Tuesday, commenced the 24 hours surveillance of all international airports across the country.
Also covered are land and sea borders.
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, made the disclosure during a television interview.
He stated that a command and control center has been established to serve as the central point for tracking all movements in and out of the country’s international airports, with round-the-clock surveillance now in effect.
He also disclosed that the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) would be incorporating the land and sea borders into the national immigration control network.
He said: “Just yesterday (Monday), we started our 24-hour operation of the control and command center and it can see all the international Nigerian airports. We did the induction just two weeks ago and we have started surveillance at the immigration headquarters in Abuja from where all our international airports across Nigeria can be monitored. We are also integrating our land and sea borders into the regular immigration control center.
“Also, the Advanced Passenger Information (API) system is also live and we have started receiving data from KLM and a lot of other airlines which has enabled us to commence the pre-profiling of people before they come into Nigeria. Before anyone comes into Nigeria, we would know who the person is, where they are coming from and where they have been over a couple of weeks or months. What we are doing is no longer profiling, we are now doing objective profiling just like it is done everywhere in the world.
“What we have is an interactional API which is the best you can get anywhere in the world. I was in California three months ago and I got to see their command and control center and what we have is comparable, if not better than that. I also came back recently from the UK where I had a meeting with the Home Secretary, and we already have a lot of what they have. We also have a 0.5 megawatts solar farm to ensure that the data and command center and also the visa approval center is off grid,” he said.
On data security of Nigerians, Tunji-Ojo said that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the NIS are integrated, assuring that the data of Nigerians are safe.
“NIMC and the NIS are 100 percent integrated. NIMC has captured the data of over 102 million Nigerians. It is debatable that there was a breach of the system because investigations are going on. I am a certified ethical hacker and I built my career in IT security and I want to say that the data of Nigerians are very safe,” he said.