IG TASKS REGIONAL POLICE CHIEFS ON COLLABORATION TO TACKLE INSECURITY
The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun has called on West African police chiefs to collaborate and devise innovative ways to tackle emerging complex security challenges facing the ECOWAS bloc.
Egbetokun made this known at a meeting of the West African Police Chiefs Committee technical sub-committee on training and operations in Abuja.
He said that the West African sub-region had in recent times been confronted with complex national security challenges, which had been heightening transnational crimes.
He said the activities of cybercriminals has imposed on all the additional burden of developing national security capacity to dominate cyberspace and deny criminals the liberty to operate in the overriding national and regional security interests.
According to him, these challenges have been posing significant threats to the national security order of member states, as well as regional peace and social economic profile.
Egbetokun listed such crimes as stealing, cross border robberies, human goods, drugs trafficking, small arms and light weapons smuggling, banditry, terrorism, as well as other non-state actors.
He further said that cybercrime and cyber-enabled crimes were now emerging as bigger challenges to the sub-region’s security.
The IG said that a critical hindrance to effective regional law enforcement operations and criminal justice delivery initiatives was the differences in legal frameworks and legislative systems among member states.
Also speaking, ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Ambassador Abdel-Fatah Musah, said that the fast evolution of information technology had further sophisticated the platforms and tactics used by criminal networks against targets.
The commissioner said that security and law enforcement agents in the region had for so many years focused on territorial, aerial and maritime borders as key points for close surveillance against crime.
