Tunji-Ojo: New Data Centre, IAPI System Will Enhance Nigeria’s Border Security, Ensure Data Protection

Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has said that with the creation of the Data Centre and new Command and Control Centre, Nigeria will be able to integrate data from across different sectors, as well as monitor the regular border points in real time, boosting Nigeria’s security.

Tunji-Ojo, in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday, also revealed that Nigeria has become one of the first countries in Africa to implement an Interactive Advanced Passenger Information (IAPU) system, an advanced version of the API, which will help in the contactless profiling of people coming into and going out of Nigeria.

The Interior Minister said this while discussing the recent commissioning of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Innovation Complex (BATIC), which comprises a Data Centre, Command and Control Centre, Visa Approval Centre (VAC), ECOWAS Biometrics Centre, Solar Farm, and Passport Personalisation Centre.

Speaking on the innovation centre, he said, “What was commissioned by the President was not an immigration innovation centre per se, it’s more of an interior innovation centre named after the president. And why is it interior? We realised that a lot of issues that we had, we were wasting lot of money by virtue of working in silos, and we just thought that just like it’s done anywhere in the world, even in the US with the Homeland, just like in the UK with the Home Office, there is always a centralised centre, a centralised position, where data sharing, information management and monitoring evaluation can happen in real time without eight different agencies working across purposes.”

He then revealed, “When we started [the data centre], we had the ambition of building a tier 4 1.4 petabyte data centre which any IT person will tell you is extremely huge. But what we’ve been able to do, to the glory of God, we’ve been able to build an 8.3 Petabyte Tier 4 data centre, which is arguably one of the biggest in Nigeria, if not the biggest. And anybody in the tech world will tell you the capacity of that… It’s out of this world, it’s massive infrastructure.”

Addressing the motivation behind the building of the data centre, Tunji-Ojo said, “We realised that passport data, which is data of Nigerians, were being stored separately.”

“So, at the end of the day, there was no harmonisation of data, and government was not in 100 per cent control of the data, and we thought that it’s not right. I mean, data is the property of government. Yes, you can bring private sector to come to jobs for you, to come and execute certain responsibilities, but the data is the responsibility of the government to safe keep, especially in line with the Data Protection Act. So, by creating this data centre, it means we can now migrate our data, centralise it, and of course, have a secondary back up site elsewhere in case there are issues here, so there is a redundancy in place,” he added.

“Today, we have a data centre that even our border monitoring, because we now have capacity to monitor our borders real time from our command and control centres – I mean the conventional borders at the moment, those are the regular border points. That have been fully integrated as I speak to you. What we hope to be able to achieve in the next one year, hopefully by the grace of God, are the regular entry points, because we believe that a secured border is a safe nation. If you cannot secure your border, if you’re not in control of entry and exit into your country, you cannot secure your nation, because you need to be in charge of the gate, which is the border in this particular instance. So, obviously, all those data, we don’t want it to be like a CCTV. There has to be storage capacity so there can be cross referencing and of course, there can be reason to go back to archives and all that.”

As part of the effort to improve national security, the Minister outlined that the BATIC now includes a Command and Control Centre capable of monitoring borders and entry points in real time. This includes the monitoring of Nigeria’s marine, land, and air borders. With international airports now linked to the Command and Control Centre, Tunji-Ojo proudly noted that the system has earned recognition from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as “the lighthouse project of Africa.”

“We brought IATA, we brought foreign agencies to come train our officers. They trained 250 officers of ours and they do shifts of 8 hours, so there are three shifts per day. So, there is 24/7 monitoring of all our regular entry points – airports, marine border, and our land border. And of course, we also integrated the API through the API. What do I mean by that? The API (Advanced Passenger Information System) were integrated through the Application Programme Interface. So, what it means now is that, because before now, what we were doing was a scenario where we used to do what I call subjective profiling.

“But with what we now have, which is not just an API, we’re one of the first countries in Africa to have what is called an IAPI, which is the latest version of the API, that’s Interactive Advanced Passenger Information/ PNR, that’s what we have now that has been commissioned, and it’s live as I speak to you. So, before you even leave your country, before you leave where you are, we already have all your details. We have your pattern of life, we have your pattern of travel, we know where you’ve been in the last 3 weeks, one month, two months and et cetera. We know maybe you’ve gone to a country of interest, a lot of things I wouldn’t want to go deep into.

“So, based on that, when you come into Nigeria, ease of doing business is now enhanced, because if you’re not a person of interest, there’s no point disturbing you or asking you stupid questions, then you go. But if you are somebody of interest, then right there, we can easily flag you and of course, take control of that and protect the border.”

Tunji-Ojo then noted that the integration of information sharing across agencies has led to improved coordination, reducing inter-agency rivalry and fostering a more effective security apparatus.

He said, “Though the office of the NSA, a lot of coordination is going on. When you come in now, especially in our centres, you do not see DSS again at that forefront as it used to be. That’s because there is handshake, there is information sharing, and there is no inter-agency rivalry, none at all. In fact, this has even made it easier because what you get on one is what you get on the other, and it makes response easy.”

He then concluded, “What we’re trying to do is to enhance the capacity of our officers to be able to objectively do their jobs, because you can’t tell them to pre-profile as if they have lasers in their eyes when you do not give them the tools, the instruments that are needed to help their jobs.”

Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi

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