Enugu State Command and Control Centre

Established by two sources, one of them an official state government publication.

Enugu State Government, 3 July 2026, reporting the Inspector-General of Police Tunji Disu's visit of 28 June 2026: the Command and Control Centre uses AI-enabled cameras with long-range zoom, operates real-time monitoring across the state with 'officers dedicated to certain areas of the state watching, seeing what is happening', and is linked to the Distress Response Squad, described as a special police unit with over 150 security vehicles fitted with AI-enabled cameras and connected to the centre. Disu is quoted: 'There is no place that is left ungoverned from the control room.'

Economy Post, 8 September 2026, an investigation: over 1,000 cameras installed across roads, markets, junctions and public facilities; facial recognition and automatic number plate recognition; drones with thermal and zoom capability for areas without fixed coverage; AI analytics designed to detect accidents, wrong-way driving, loitering and unusual gatherings; a command centre at the Enugu State Government House operating 24 hours a day with real-time coordination with security agencies; and budget allocations of about 4.657 billion naira in 2024 and 10 billion naira in 2025 for CCTV, drones and facial recognition. The same investigation reports that no publicly available information identifies the companies that supplied or installed the equipment.

What is and is not established. The AI-enabled camera network, the command centre, the 2024 launch and the integration with a named police unit rest on both sources including the state government's own page, and are treated as established. The facial recognition and number plate recognition capabilities, the camera count and the budget figures rest on the Economy Post investigation alone and are recorded here as attributed reporting rather than as confirmed capability - which is why the technology field describes an AI-enabled camera network rather than naming facial recognition.

Legal position. The Economy Post investigation reports that Enugu State has no dedicated safe city or surveillance law, that the state Attorney-General confirmed draft legislation is still being worked on, and that only the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 currently applies. No legal basis is recorded, because the absence of a specific law is a finding about the deployment rather than a legal basis.

No vendor is recorded: the investigation records that no supplier is publicly identified. No oversight body has been identified.

This is a state government facility rather than a federal police programme. No source establishes a comparable AI deployment by the Nigeria Police Force nationally.

Update, November 2026. An investigation by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR, 22 August 2026, by Fidelis Mac-Leva) reports more than a thousand CCTV cameras in Enugu city and drones held at Government House. A special adviser, Vincent Onyeabor, says the AI "can flag accidents, loitering, wrong-way driving, or unusual crowds", and the Budget Commissioner is reported as saying the system includes number plate and facial recognition; the 2025 budget allocated 10 billion naira for CCTV, drones and facial recognition for the centre. The centre operates without a law governing it: the Attorney General, Osinachi Peter Mbah, said "We are still working on a draft legislation" and that the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 is sufficient for now. ICIR found no independent oversight board and no clear public policy on how long footage is kept or who can download it. The Secretary to the State Government described a "selective procurement module" and did not name the vendors. The Police Commissioner, Mamman Bitrus Giwa, is quoted as saying "The police and DSS carry out the tracking even at the command-and-control centre", while also saying the police are not in charge of the system. The government denies using the system to track critics; lawyers, activists, journalists and opposition figures quoted by ICIR allege that it does.