The Chinese government has denied the reports that it opened and operates police stations in Nigeria and other countries where its nationals reside.
Recall Various news outlets reported on Tuesday 18th October that China established a police station in Nigeria based on an investigative report carried out by a rights organization, Safeguard Defenders titled “110 Overseas Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild.”
However, in an exclusive interview with Vanguard on Wednesday 19th October, a top Chinese official who spoke on condition of anonymity refuted the report, stressing that diplomatic relations cannot allow any government to open police posts in another sovereign country outside its borders.
The source said, “There is no such station in Nigeria or everywhere. This is because no sovereign country may allow other countries to establish their own (police) stations on their territory. “Isn’t this common sense?”
The Chinese official stated that there are outreach programs in countries where Chinese residents live to assist and protect them from terrorism, abduction, and other crimes that could risk their lives.
“Also, there is only one category of outreach services for Chinese communities, therefore China has no intention or spare energy to run police stations outside its borders,” he says.
“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 helped collaborate with local security operatives in managing the forenamed incident.