"...the most painful thing is that these people tell you boldly that they are from Chad, Mali, and the Niger Republic. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has said it many times that the herdsmen terrorising us are not Nigerians." - Prof Patrick Muoboghare
One of the solutions we must implement is to use TECHNOLOGY to promote border security and fight crime and corruption:
- Biometrics technology has to be brought in at our embassies, airports, and all other entry and exit border points.
- Everyone in the country, citizens and foreigners alike must be made to have a valid and traceable/trackable form of IDENTIFICATION that is in a secure database. This database must be readily available at all times to our security agencies and our criminal justice system in general.
- People from other countries seeking to enter Nigeria must go through thorough background check procedures. They must be made to provide background information from their home countries. And modern day technology tools are available to assist in this.
- We need border walls. Walls work. Advances in science and technology have made it possible to have very strong and secure border walls. You can even have a great see-through wall because it helps to see what is going on, on the other side. The wall can even serve as a source of energy at the same time: solar wall!
- Drone Technology and border crossing scanners have to be put in place to help with border security and immigration services.
- GPS (Global Positioning System) Technology is a must have. Each of our six geopolitical zones should have a center equipped with state of the art computer technology to see and assess things that are happening in our lands, airways and waterways in real time. Your country is a map. Let that map be at your fingertips in real time.
- We must work tirelessly to ensure that every nook and cranny of the country is interconnected and easily accessible by road, air and sea. Every dwelling place must have a registered address that can be easily tracked and navigated to.
If we put these things in place, they would go a very long way to ensure that our country is peaceful, secure and prosperous.
