TheCable

The federal government says it is “at the point” of entering into an agreement with Huawei on the electronic surveillance of the nation’s borders.

Rauf Aregbesola, the minister of interior, said this in Abuja when he was featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum.

Aregbesola said the electronic surveillance posts will strengthen existing immigration checks, to enhance the security of the country.

“As a matter of fact, we are at the point of signing an agreement with Huawei on e-border,” he said.

“This means we want to employ technology to put all the critical border positions on 24/7 satellite-based electronic surveillance.

“This will give us 24/7 real-time surveillance of designated border areas from all our monitoring centres, particularly the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) Headquarters.

“You can as well press a button to know what is happening in Kamba border post, Jibia border and even Mfum, among others.”

Aregbesola said the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) in conjunction with other agencies would continue to curtail illegal migration and all cross-border crimes.

“We are the lead in border control, we are not the only agency in border management, but we’ll do our best to ensure Nigerians are safe,” he said.

“Virtually all the other security and intelligence agencies are involved, we are not relaxing, we are dedicated and committed.

“And we are zealous and ensuring that this move will reduce threats, and we’ll manage and control the borders.”

Aregbesola said Nigerians should understand that the country has one of the longest borders in Africa.

“To really drive that home, Nigeria has about 5,000 kilometres of border line. What that tells you is that it is not possible for you to have enough men that will man every inch or centimetre or millimetre of that border line,” he said.

“But we have established border positions that are manned, spread across the entire length of the boundaries of Nigeria.

“But beyond that, which is about sovereignty, is the fact that the artificiality of our boundaries cannot just be thrown aside.

“It means that except where it is impossible for human beings to exist, there is no border line where there is human existence that does not separate human beings, communities who are homogenous.”

The minister added that when e-border monitoring and surveillance is in place, it would curtail the rate of cross-border crimes.