 It is both a pleasure and an honor for me to address you at the launching of the West African Police Information System as well as the inauguration of WAPI's data center. I bring you greetings from the president, all of our commissioners and the staff of the ECOWAS Commission and extend our congratulations for this great milestone. We thank the government of the Republic of Ghana for the warm reception and its usual hospitality that has been extended to my delegation since we arrived in today's city last night. Our minister, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the dynamics of globalization has made the fight against international criminality more challenging for law enforcement agents around the world. This challenge is even more greater in our region where we have limited human and technical capacities to effectively control the wider frontiers that we have within the West African subregion. Our capacities to share and to exchange information or exchange intelligence, to reach and research new ideas and research on new crime areas, to conduct job training as well as the operations of our men and women in arms, and to anticipate to plan and prevent criminal activities before they are committed a week. Our current capacity to do these things are weak and they therefore need to be strengthened. One of the main areas of weakness in managing transnational organized criminality in our region is the provision of accurate statistics and data on reported occurrence. In an attempt to address this weakness, ECOWAS in collaboration with Interpol through the funding of the European Union launched the West African police information system. We all call it WAPIS. This was done just as you may know in 2012, just recently. WAPIS, as we were told earlier, is designed to build the needed capacities in our member states through the setting up of data centers, primarily to assemble, process, and share information on community issues at national, regional, and global levels. Our 2012 initiative had its roots in the memorandum of understanding that was signed between ECOWAS and Interpol in August 2004. This engagement was aimed at enlarging our capacities. It was also aimed at permitting us to adequately respond to the fight that we were faced with in all forms of national and transnational crimes. Which I will be reminded that the need to mount an effective fight against criminality in our region was fully recognized and translated when the heads of state and government of West Africa adopted a protocol in October 2005 for the establishment of an ECOWAS Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Bureau. This bureau is charged with the responsibility to undertake criminal investigations, collect relevant data, and maintain a data bank, and as well as facilitating the exchange of information of criminals, criminal organizations, and their activities. Your Excellencies, the distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, the 2005 protocol gives WAPIS the political cloud to serve as a data collection and coalition platform. It empowers the system as to serve as a direct response mechanism to allow the criminal intelligence and investigation bureau to carry out its mandate. The need for programs, the need for programs, and I think that was alluded to, let's now get to the implementation stage, the need for programs to support effective coordination in the field of crime prevention and the administration of justice between members states of ECOWAS and the international community cannot be over-emphasized. The regional integration goal of ECOWAS is to raise the living standards of its people and to ensure economic growth and regional development. We will all agree that as the environment for peace is secure and the community is free of crime, these will provide the fundamental building blocks to the achievement of those goals. The establishment of the West African Police Chiefs Committee, WACO, and its transformation to an ECOWAS specialized institution has consolidated the platform for regional cooperation or criminal matters within a broader security framework. The WACO Secretariat, which is done itself at the ECOWAS Commission in close collaboration with Interpol, specifically our regional office in Abidjan, has continually been engaged in the reinforcement of capacities of law enforcement agents. The focus to date have been placed on understanding and addressing the dynamics of transnational organized crimes in a programmatic manner and the sharing of best practices in the field. More programs in these areas and in other areas will be mounted in the years ahead. At this junction permit me, our minister, ladies and gentlemen, to find the European Union on behalf of the entire ECOWAS citizens for funding the pilot project phase one. This is a very important initiative. Let me stress our hope that the generosity will be extended to support the takeoff program of the remaining 11 countries within our subregion. We look forward to the useful cooperation with our partners in general towards the installation of the program at the regional level within the ECOWAS Commission. May I also thank our co-implementing partners, the Interpol specifically, Mr. Pierre Roulin, who is the special representative of Interpol to the European Union in Brussels who played personally, attached himself to this program to get us to where we are today. On the whole we sincerely appreciate the collaboration with Interpol. We also note with deep appreciation the presence of other chiefs of law enforcement agencies such as the Ghana integration and customs services among others without whom the essence of today's program will not have been achieved. To the Inspector General of Police who would like to say thank you, Mr. Mohammed Admin Al-Azham, not only for your dynamism and hard work as the immediate past chairman of the West African Police Chief Committee, but also for providing the necessary requisite technical support for the hosting of the Ghana WAPI's office. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we have come a long way since 2005. Today, 10 years later, we gather to launch and inaugurate WAPI's data center. This is indeed a milestone. Not only should we be proud of this achievement, but the ceremony calls for rededication of ourselves and our respective institutions to fight. That is before us. That fight that is before us. We fight to make sure that our subregion and beyond our subregion is free to provide the kind of environment we need for national development. Playing this role individually and collectively is our way of contributing effectively to the achievement of the Gold Original Integration and Cooperation in West Africa. Best wishes to the center and may God bless all of us. Thank you.