According to Lucky Irabor, chief of defense staff, 137 of the country’s 261 borders in the north-east and north-west are unguarded.
He said this on Thursday at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos during a lecture on “security, defense, and development in Nigeria.”
According to Irabor, the porous borders allow terrorists from neighboring countries to easily enter Nigeria and wreak havoc.
“Our borders are largely unmanned. The penetrability of our vast unmanned land areas – the north-east and north-west zones, particularly Borno, Yobe, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina states – with neigbouring countries such as Niger Republic and Chad among others has continued to be a key source of criminality and violent crimes in those parts of the country,” he said.
“The porous nature of the borders has made it easily accessible for terrorists and bandits to enter the country to commit mayhem.
“For instance, there are about 364 approved international border points in Nigeria with about 261 in the north-east and north-west regions. Out of this 261 only 124 are manned leaving the remaining 137 unmanned by security agencies.
“Intelligence suggests that violence actors are using some of these normal border points to move freely from countries into Nigeria to cause mayhem.”
In addition to physical structures and effective management, the defense chief advocated for the use of technology as a tool in strengthening Nigeria’s borders.
He stated that a broad-based integrated border management system must be established.
“So I am looking ahead, when we bring technology to bear in the management of our borders, in addition of course, to physical, structures that need to be established across the length of our borders, then we cam contribute to the overall security of our land,” he said.
He added that actions are being taken to ensure that “we move to correct this,” but that “a good number of borders remain unmanned.”
