According to Chinese officials who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, the Chinese government has not opened or operates police stations in Nigeria or other countries where its nationals reside.
Recall that on Tuesday, China opened a police station in the most populous African country among 110 countries to combat criminal activities among its citizens living abroad.
The report grew out of an investigation by the rights group Safeguard Defenders titled “110 Overseas Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild.”
In an exclusive interview with journalists, a top Chinese official responded to the report by saying that diplomatic relations cannot allow any country to open police stations in another sovereign country outside its borders.
The source said, “There is no such station in Nigeria or everywhere. This is because any sovereign country cannot allow other countries to set up their own (police) stations on their land. This is common sense, right?”
The Chinese official, on the other hand, stated that there are outreach programmes in countries where Chinese citizens live to help protect them from terrorism, abduction, and other crimes that could endanger their lives.
His words: “Also, there is only one category of outreach services for Chinese communities so China does not have any intention or spare energy to run police stations outside its shores. I hope that maybe you can make an objective report.
Some of the cases handled by the outreach, he said, were abductions in Nigeria. In June 2022, four Chinese nationals were kidnapped in Niger State.
“You know in Nigeria, there are a lot of insecurity issues happening almost every day. I cannot remember, maybe September or August or July or June, there were terrorists, bandits, they had kidnapped a lot of innocent persons, and also among these innocent persons, there were some Chinese nationals.”
He stated that the outreach assisted him in working with local security personnel to manage the aforementioned incident.
“What I mean (by the outreach services) is that every nation has its mission to care for and help their own nationals. Says another source from the China side.
He furthered: “So they have no right, they have no power to decide or command Nigeria government or police forces, what they can only do is to assist or play the outside role to help the Chinese nationals.”
“So the fundamental reason or factor is the locals and the Nigerian government, so we fully respect the sovereignty issue. So there is no sovereignty issue, so the report ( Safeguard Defenders’ ‘110 Overseas Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild’) is fake news,”
