Hundreds of personnel were drawn from the NCS, Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), police, Department of State Service (DSS), National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and the military, to form the border-manning teams.
Though the borders were reopened in December 2020, the operatives were retained and redesigned to continue surveillance and counter-smuggling. The codename for the operation was changed to Joint Border Patrol.
Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), retired Col. Hameed Ali, confirmed the change of status and expectations from the operation while speaking in February.
“We just set up a joint border patrol. It is an offshoot of the joint border drill, which was the operation we launched to close our borders,” Ali said.