The International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL, has commended the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC for its operational effectiveness and collaborative efforts with it in driving activities against national and trans-border financial crimes.
This commendation was given in Abuja when Interpol top officers, led by Cyril Gout, Executive Director, Police Services, paid a courtesy visit to the EFCC’s Executive Chairman, Ola Olukoyede at the Commission’s corporate headquarters on Wednesday.
Speaking at the occasion, Olaolu Adegbite, Assistant Inspector General of Police, AIG and Head, Interpol National Central Bureau observed that the EFCC, Nigerian Police Force and other law enforcement agencies are partners.
“We have been working together, supporting one another and whatever we do at the Nigerian Police Force, specifically from the National Central Bureau, the NCB, we always put EFCC first”, he said.
Adegbite specifically commended the EFCC for its local and global strides, pointing out that “ EFCC is a model for us. The EFCC is an international brand. When you say EFCC, the whole world knows that it projects Nigeria in a very positive way.”
Speaking further, he stated that the EFCC has been pivotal to all the Interpol’s operations. “It is part of Project Agric, Project Water, all our cybercrime projects and Project Serengeti that we just concluded.
In all our projects, we always invite EFCC officers and they’ve been doing amazing jobs, working as a collective to make sure that together, we protect our country. The EFCC is one of the first agencies that the NCB linked to the i247 Network.
The i247 Network is the global system of communication for Interpol member countries”, he said.
He appreciated Olukoyede for allowing the participation of EFCC representatives at the Interpol’s Silver Working Group.
The Silver Notice was created last year specifically to tackle money laundering. He pleaded that the EFCC continues to utilize Interpol’s tools because they are multi-jurisdictional and transnational”
He disclosed that Mr. Gout was in Nigeria for the handover of the West African Police Information System, WAPIS, to West African regional and national authorities .
The System is a digitised information-sharing network among law enforcement agencies to break criminal activities among the 16 ECOWAS states.
“The WAPIS system is supposed to be domiciled with all our law enforcement agencies where they upload data. Criminal databases are key, especially digitized ones like WAPIS in resolving all forms of crimes,” he said.
He further disclosed that West Africa has the unique challenge of crime dispersal. Criminals migrate across regional borders easily but with WAPIS, crimes such as human trafficking, money laundering, economic crimes, cyber crimes and terrorism can be tackled through robust information amenities among ECOWAS member nations.
In his remark, Gout noted that with the handover of WAPIS to Nigerian law enforcement agencies, it has become a national information system.
“It’s a Nigerian Information System to collect and share data that are relevant for the nation’s safety and security. Whatever information that we have, whatever information that we want to cross-check should be contained or shared within this information system. We see the national information system as the only way that we are interconnecting our information sharing and that we are efficient together. So, it is a necessity that we work together,” he said.
