Nigeria pushes for unified ECOWAS Immigration database, warns of Tech wastage

Federal Government has called for the establishment of a regional information system that would give Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS-member countries access to a single, shared immigration database. 

Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, made the call on Wednesday during a high-level engagement with ministers in charge of immigration and border management from ECOWAS member states in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire,.

According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Alao Babatunde, the minister warned that the absence of such a platform was undermining the value of technological investments already made across the sub-region.

The minister said the current absence of a structured data management framework meant that individual country efforts — including the issuance of QR-coded identity cards and training programmes on fraud detection — were being duplicated without delivering their full potential.

“What we can do realistically is to be able to create an integrated platform where we can integrate all these solutions and be able to have a shared solution, because if we keep issuing cards, training people on the issue of how to identify and detect fraudulent cards, to a large extent we are also wasting and undermining the power of technology”, he said. 

He said QR codes on identity documents were designed precisely to enable quick verification, a function that could only be fully realised through a common database accessible across member states.

“So the whole idea why some of these things are QR-coded is for them to be easily verified. So if we have this database, even for our visa, for residency and other things, it will be a source of truth for the processes,” he said.

Tunji-Ojo argued that building such a system did not require starting from scratch, as data already existed within individual member states and needed only to be harmonised at the sub-regional level.

“With an information system, we don’t need to start afresh by getting this data, so all we need to do is integrate this data on a sub-regional basis and that will give us a supranational database,” he said.

On border management funding, the minister urged ECOWAS members to move away from a one-size-fits-all allocation model, stressing that the priorities of individual countries differed significantly depending on their geographic and economic circumstances.

“I want to advise that we shouldn’t be specific to say this percentage is for national border; for some countries, there are other things that are more context for individual countries than others.

Border is more economic than security for some of these countries. So what will be given or what will be allocated has to be in line with the realities,” Tunji-Ojo said.

He also weighed in on capacity building, advocating for a decentralized approach to training and institutional development across the region. “Let us ensure efficiency, excellence and viability of these institutions,” he said.

The minister also called for a review of the mandatory yellow card requirement for travel, with a view to examining possible exemptions for specific regions, and pressed for sustained collaboration among interior ministers and political leaders on internal security management.

“Because if there is a weakness in one country, it has a way of affecting the other country, hence we must share opinions and be able to work together,” he said.