The committee established by Defence Minister General Christopher Musa to review and strengthen Nigeria’s border management architecture has held a formal working session with the National Boundary Commission in Abuja, bringing together the two institutions in a coordination framework designed to address the growing range of security threats operating across the country’s land and maritime frontiers.
NBC Director General Adamu Adaji welcomed the committee, describing effective border governance as foundational to safeguarding Nigeria’s territorial integrity, maintaining peaceful relations with neighboring states, and confronting threats including terrorism, arms trafficking, irregular migration, transnational criminal networks, and the emerging challenge of climate-induced population displacement that was placing new pressure on border communities and crossing points.
He said the commission’s experience in establishing local cross-border cooperation platforms along Nigeria’s international boundaries had produced practical results in building community trust, promoting social cohesion, and generating the kind of bottom-up intelligence that formal security deployments alone could not replicate. He called for complementary investments in border infrastructure, surveillance technology, intelligence-sharing systems, and cross-border cooperation with Nigeria’s neighbors as interlocking components of a comprehensive border security framework.
Committee leader Brigadier-General M.B. Shehu said the committee recognized the value of the NBC’s institutional knowledge and community engagement work and sought to build on that foundation as it developed recommendations for strengthening border management across a frontier that extended thousands of kilometers through some of the most insecure terrain in West and Central Africa.
