ECOWAS President, Dr Omar Touray, says collaboration of member states is crucial to ensuring the sustainability of the West African Police Information System (WAPIS), a subregional security initiative.
Touray made this known at the official handing over ceremony of WAPIS by the International Police Organisation (INTERPOL) to ECOWAS, national and regional authorities and governments on Tuesday in Abuja.
WAPIS is a successful collaboration model between ECOWAS and INTERPOL, funded by the EU, in the fight against transnational crimes and terrorism.
Touray, represented by Dr Abdel-Fatah Musah, ECOWAS Commissioner, Political Affairs, Peace and Security, described the initiative as a unique technical tool for all member states to collaborate and fight subregional crime.
He noted that terrorism and other crimes facing the subregion were not limited to zones or individual member states but existed everywhere throughout West Africa, which necessitated collaboration.
According to Touray, this is why ECOWAS is still striving to maintain intelligence sharing, collaboration, and cooperation with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, even though they decided to leave the bloc.
“We feel that you cannot fight terrorism in the Sahel alone without collaboration with the coastal countries, as we have seen evidence.
“So, ECOWAS’ door has always been open for collaboration and we are also happy that this extends beyond even the 15 original member states of ECOWAS to other countries.
“We need to broaden partnerships, and still continue collaboration with the European Union, in order to maintain the expertise that has been developed in the course of the WAPIS process in the region,” he said.
The commission’s president said that experts from member states had made a number of recommendations, which would culminate in a legally binding mechanism that would cement the WAPIS framework.
He said there was need to get the political will of member states to make them understand that sharing information was important and WAPIS tool was useful for them in the fight against criminality.
“This is so that we can genuinely have a regional approach. The region must have autonomy over the infrastructure that is being created.
“WAPIS has succeeded in bridging the implementation gap to an extent.
“We need to take it further and that will require a continuation of the WAPIS agenda, even as the funding by the European Union is coming to an end,” he said.
Also speaking, Nigeria’s Minister of Police Affairs, Sen. Ibrahim Geidam, said that Nigeria had greatly benefited from the implementation of WAPIS since it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with INTERPOL in 2019.
He said that in recognition of the importance of interagency collaboration in tackling security challenges, the government brought onboard key national law enforcement agencies for that purpose.
“Additionally, in our deliberate move to foster ownership and operational efficiency, the ministry recently organised a three-day WAPIS workshop themed: “Interagency Collaboration on Information Sharing among Law Enforcement Agencies in Nigeria.
“This vital workshop brought together key stakeholders from various law enforcement agencies, resulting in strategic deliberations that were encapsulated in a communique presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC),” Geidam said.
EU Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr Gautier Mignot, said WAPIS’ success demonstrated that regional and international cooperation supported by modern and adaptive technologies could truly transform security in West Africa.
He said the EU had played a pivotal role in modernising and enhancing West Africa’s security forces through WAPIS, which it funded with 28 million euros from its beginning in 2012.
The ambassador disclosed that since 2015, over 740,000 police data entries had been digitalised and integrated into the WAPIS systems, which was a key asset in the fight against transnational crime.
He added that as the EU was officially ending its funding in a few weeks, it was imperative to ensure WAPIS sustainability so it would continue serving the region’s security forces.
Mr Cyril Gout, Interpol Executive Director, Police Services, who symbolically officially handed over WAPIS to Geidam and ECOWAS, expressed his delight in seeing WAPIS reach its current level of implementation.
He said that WAPIS, which worked through harmonised data sharing, had become the cornerstone of law enforcement in the ECOWAS subregion.
The Inspector-General, Nigeria Police Force, Mr Kayode, Egbetokun, who was represented by Mr Olaolu Adegbite, the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Interpol National Central Bureau, also gave a goodwill message.
WAPIS was unveiled in Sept. 2012 to enhance West African law enforcement agencies’ capacity to tackle transnational crime using digital technology.
