BY LANRE OGUNDIPE
THE COUNTRY has the agencies, the personnel and increasingly the technology. The harder task is making them function as one security system.
There is a phrase that returns whenever Nigeria’s security troubles deepen: our borders are porous.
It is not entirely wrong. But it has become too convenient an explanation for a problem that is considerably more complicated.
The issue is sufficiently important that the Inspector General of Police, Olatunji Disu, visited the headquarters of the Nigeria Immigration Service in April specifically to deepen cooperation on border security and intelligence sharing. He called for stronger coordination mechanisms, joint training and real-time intelligence exchange. The NIS, in response, pointed to its collaboration with INTERPOL on border security, transnational crime and intelligence sharing.
Nigeria does not lack agencies responsible for its borders. It does not lack security personnel. It does not lack laws, strategies, border posts or increasingly sophisticated technology.
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What Nigeria needs to answer is a more difficult question:
Can the security system see the whole picture?
That question deserves attention now because the country is at an important point in the evolution of its border-management architecture. The National Border Management Strategy that guided the Nigeria Immigration Service from 2019 to 2023 has run its course, while the regional security environment has changed considerably. The threats confronting the country are no longer confined to traditional smuggling or unauthorised migration. They include trafficking, organised crime, terrorism, movement of illicit goods, document fraud and criminal networks whose operations do not respect national boundaries.
The Nigeria Immigration Service has a dedicated Border Management Directorate responsible for land control posts and patrols, airport and aerial patrols, seaport and marine patrols and other border functions. Its institutional structure also provides for intelligence and surveillance, investigation and compliance, ICT and cybersecurity.
The Nigeria Customs Service has a separate but equally important responsibility. Its modernisation programme is moving towards digital processing, risk management and greater integration with other border agencies. Its own recent time release study recommended data harmonisation and information technology integration between Customs and other government agencies for integrated risk management.
The Police, intelligence services and other security institutions have responsibilities that intersect with both.
On paper, therefore, the country possesses many of the instruments of modern border security.
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The difficulty is that national security does not operate on paper.
An immigration officer may possess information about a traveller. Customs may have information about a consignment. The Police may have information about a suspect. An intelligence agency may have information about a criminal network. A border community may notice unusual movement before any government official does.
Each piece may be important.
But information that remains inside separate institutional compartments may fail to become usable intelligence.
That is where the real challenge begins.
Nigeria’s previous border-management strategy understood this problem. Its framework recognised integrated border management and the need for cooperation among agencies because border security could not be separated from migration, trade, national security and the communities living along the frontier.
The question now is not whether that principle is correct.
It is whether it has been sufficiently translated into an operating system.
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The issue is sufficiently important that the Inspector General of Police, Olatunji Disu, visited the headquarters of the Nigeria Immigration Service in April specifically to deepen cooperation on border security and intelligence sharing. He called for stronger coordination mechanisms, joint training and real-time intelligence exchange. The NIS, in response, pointed to its collaboration with INTERPOL on border security, transnational crime and intelligence sharing.
In April 2026, ECOWAS interior, immigration and border-management ministers formally endorsed a regional Border Management Strategy and Action Plan. One of its priorities is an integrated platform linking border-management information systems, including MIDAS and PISCES, to improve data storage and interoperability. The ministers also committed to working towards mutual acceptance of the ECOWAS National Biometric Identity Card at air, land and sea borders by December 2026. Nigeria is among the seven member states that have already deployed the card.
That should not be interpreted as an indictment of either institution.
It is, rather, an indication of where the next reform effort should concentrate.
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If the country’s security agencies still need to strengthen real-time intelligence exchange, then the next generation of border policy must make that exchange a structural requirement rather than an aspiration.
The question is simple enough.
If Immigration identifies a person or movement of concern, how quickly can the relevant information reach another authorised agency?
If Customs detects a suspicious consignment, can the information be connected to other relevant intelligence?
If a security agency identifies a transnational criminal network, can border commands receive actionable information quickly enough to make a difference?
If an individual is flagged at one crossing point, can another relevant point know about it?
And when an interception is made, does the intelligence generated from that operation return to the system so that the next threat can be identified more intelligently?
These are not questions about bureaucracy.
They are questions about whether Nigeria’s border security is preventive or merely reactive.
There is encouraging evidence that government understands the direction in which the system must move.
The Nigeria Customs Service is pursuing digital transformation and integrated risk management. Its own materials describe a modernisation agenda based on technology, risk management and inter-agency integration.
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The Nigeria Customs Service has also developed the B’Odogwu platform and is working towards a National Single Window intended to create a more unified digital environment for trade and maritime processes.
These are important developments.
But they raise a question that policymakers should ask before celebrating the technology itself:
Are we building connected systems, or simply building more systems?
There is a profound difference.
A database is valuable only when authorised people can obtain the information they need.
A biometric document is useful only when identity information can be reliably verified.
A risk-management platform is useful only when the warning it produces reaches someone capable of acting upon it.
Technology can make the state’s eyes sharper. It cannot decide what those eyes should do with what they see.
That is why interoperability should become a measurable national-security objective.
Nigeria should know which border-management systems must communicate, what information may lawfully be exchanged, who has authority to access it, how quickly relevant alerts should move and who is accountable when critical information fails to reach the agency that needs it.
This is particularly urgent because the regional environment is changing.
In April 2026, ECOWAS interior, immigration and border-management ministers formally endorsed a regional Border Management Strategy and Action Plan. One of its priorities is an integrated platform linking border-management information systems, including MIDAS and PISCES, to improve data storage and interoperability. The ministers also committed to working towards mutual acceptance of the ECOWAS National Biometric Identity Card at air, land and sea borders by December 2026. Nigeria is among the seven member states that have already deployed the card.
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This is potentially important for Nigeria.
A country’s border security cannot be designed as though the border ends where its national map ends. People, goods and criminal networks move across frontiers. Security information must therefore be capable of moving across them as well.
The same principle applies to customs.
ECOWAS is advancing SIGMAT, its interconnected system for the management of goods in transit, with the objective of enabling secure electronic exchange between customs administrations and improving regional transit procedures. The initiative has moved beyond concept into implementation and operational use along some regional corridors, although institutional, legal and technical challenges remain.
Nigeria should be at the centre of this regional transition.
But there is another dimension that should not be lost in the enthusiasm for digitalisation.
The border is inhabited.
Millions of people live and conduct legitimate economic and social activities in communities adjoining Nigeria’s frontiers. Some communities have historical, ethnic and commercial connections that predate the modern boundaries separating states.
They cannot all be treated as potential threats.
Nor should border communities be treated as passive spectators to the security operations around them.
They can provide early warning and local knowledge that formal systems cannot always produce.
The Nigeria Police has recently emphasised the role of traditional institutions and local communities in providing credible intelligence and strengthening early-warning mechanisms, while warning against ethnic or religious profiling.
That is the right balance.
Community intelligence must be structured, lawful and accountable. It must not become an excuse for vigilantism or collective suspicion. But a security architecture that ignores the people who know the terrain most intimately is voluntarily discarding a potentially valuable source of information.
There is another balance Nigeria must maintain.
A secure border is not necessarily a closed border.
Nigeria is part of a regional community committed to the movement of people and goods. Border controls that are so cumbersome that legitimate commerce is strangled can produce economic damage without necessarily producing greater security.
ECOWAS itself is simultaneously pursuing stronger border management and the facilitation of legitimate movement and trade. Recent regional engagements have emphasised both security and the reduction of unnecessary barriers to cross-border commerce.
The objective should therefore be intelligent control.
The state should be able to distinguish a legitimate traveller from a dangerous movement without treating every traveller as suspicious.
That requires better information, not simply more restrictions.
It also requires accountability.
Nigeria has border institutions. It has trained personnel. It is investing in biometrics and digital systems. Customs is moving towards integrated risk management. The Police and Immigration Service are openly strengthening intelligence cooperation. ECOWAS is moving towards greater interoperability across the region.
The next national border-management strategy should establish measurable outcomes. Nigerians should not be asked to judge border security by the number of vehicles purchased, buildings commissioned, patrols conducted or technology platforms launched.
Those are inputs.
The real question is what those inputs produce.
How many significant threats were detected?
How quickly did relevant information move?
How many interventions prevented dangerous movement?
How many investigations followed?
How many cases reached prosecution?
Where are the persistent vulnerabilities?
Which interventions are working and which are not?
Sensitive operational information must, of course, remain protected. But aggregate performance cannot reasonably be treated as a state secret.
A serious security system should be capable of demonstrating that its investments are reducing identifiable risks.
This is where the Federal Government has an opportunity to make the next phase of border management different from previous cycles.
It does not necessarily require another institution.
It requires clearer institutional responsibility.
Someone must have responsibility for the national border-intelligence picture.
Someone must be able to determine whether information from Immigration, Customs, Police, intelligence agencies and other relevant institutions can be brought together lawfully and quickly enough to support action.
Someone must be answerable when the information exists but does not reach the people who need it.
Without that clarity, responsibility can become dispersed precisely when accountability is required.
Nigeria cannot hermetically seal its borders. No serious security policy should pretend otherwise.
The objective should be more practical and more demanding.
The country must be able to see significant risks early, move intelligence quickly, respond with the right agency and learn from every serious interception or failure.
That should be the standard against which the next generation of border policy is judged.
The ingredients already exist.
Nigeria has border institutions. It has trained personnel. It is investing in biometrics and digital systems. Customs is moving towards integrated risk management. The Police and Immigration Service are openly strengthening intelligence cooperation. ECOWAS is moving towards greater interoperability across the region.
What Nigeria now needs is to make these parts function as one security architecture.
The country should resist the temptation to announce another technological solution to an institutional problem.
The scanner cannot compensate for information that does not move.
The database cannot compensate for an agency that cannot act.
The border post cannot compensate for intelligence that arrives after the suspect has crossed.
And more personnel cannot compensate indefinitely for a system in which responsibility is divided but the intelligence picture remains fragmented.
The next border-management strategy should therefore begin with a simple proposition:
Nigeria does not merely need to watch its borders. It needs to connect what it sees.
That is where the real security challenge lies.
And that is where policymakers, border managers and the security agencies entrusted with protecting the country must now direct their attention.
Ogundipe, public affairs analyst and former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, writes this column every Monday.
