Nigeria Police tracked arms syndicate to Burkina Faso — Frank Mba

Nigeria Police spokesperson Frank Mba has revealed how security agencies tracked a criminal syndicate from Nigeria to Burkina Faso and recovered thousands of AK-47 ammunition.

Mba, while speaking on Thursday when he featured as a guest on ‘Good Morning Nigeria’, a programme on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), said the police worked with other international agencies to apprehend the criminal syndicate.

According to him, the stretch of Nigeria’s borders are hotspots and offers easy passage for arms dealers.

But he said the police are working towards dismantling such criminal operations.

“We’ve identified the hotspots for arms trafficking in Nigeria, and the hotspots are majorly the border areas. Today, these border areas are receiving a lot of attention from our men,” he said.

“We’ve also come to understand very clearly the international dimensions of arms trafficking, and that’s why we are focusing on identifying, investigating and dismantling international arms smuggling syndicates.

“We have done that successfully from 2019 till now; in fact, for one of the syndicates, we tracked all the way from Saki in Oyo state through to Benin Republic, followed their route up to Burkina Faso, and picked up every single person involved.

“We worked with INTERPOL, we worked with WAPOL, and from that particular syndicate, we recovered up to 6,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition.”

Mba added that the force is also working towards apprehending persons involved in the manufacturing and export of small arms from Nigeria to neighbouring countries.