“Information
sharing is crucial to tackling the menace of trans-border crimes in
West Africa; it is through such exchange that we were able to nab a
Ghanaian/Nigerian kidnapper two weeks ago, after evading arrest for
many years,” Idris said on Wednesday.
Idris
spoke in Accra, Ghana in a paper titled: “The role of Nigeria
Police in national security and its contributions in West Africa”,
delivered at an ongoing West Africa international security
conference.
“For
several years, Evans terrorised Nigerians and nationals of many
countries across West Africa. Efforts to apprehend him did not yield
the desired results until we spread our search net wider,” he said.
The police chief, who solicited closer ties among security agencies
in the sub-region, emphasised the need to improve the method of
monitoring and surveillance, particularly among border and coastal
police units.
Idris
called for improved communication capabilities among intelligence
gathering outfits in West Africa, and called for mutual support to
plug loopholes usually exploited by criminals. He said that the
Nigeria Police Force had 300,000 personnel in 127 area commands and
5303 divisions, adding that the force had consistently contributed to
stability and peace in ECOWAS nations and under UN mandates.
“The
Nigeria Police Force trained 250 Liberian Police personnel in 2005
and has consistently offered training slots to police officers from
Gambia and Sierra Leone at the Police Staff College, Jos and the
Police Academy, Wudil. “We also trained 100 police officers from
the Republic of Niger on mobile police combat in 1998. At the end of
the training, Nigeria donated trucks, riot equipment and tear smoke
to the Nigerien government,” he said.
Idris
said that the Nigeria Police Force also helped to stabilise Guinea
Bissau in 2012, when the military intervened in its leadership and
truncated democracy. “Our police personnel remained there until
democracy was restored in 2014,” he stated.
The
IGP expressed Nigeria’s readiness to consistently cooperate with
police formations in other countries to track down criminals,
pointing out that such mutual cooperation had become even more
necessary as technology had reduced the world to a small village.
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