More reporting options are now available for Nigerians who suspect financial fraud, but the immediate effect is deeper overlap among the multiple official systems already handling the same tasks. The Nigeria Police Force on September 1 introduced Vigilant, a mobile platform that accepts reports, evidence uploads, case tracking and feedback, built by the Force’s Information and Communication Technology Department with financial-sector stakeholders.
The police presented the app as part of a wider modernisation drive. Inspector-General of Police Olatunji Disu said, "The policing environment is changing rapidly. Crime is becoming more sophisticated, information moves faster, and citizens increasingly expect public institutions to be accessible and responsive to technology. The Nigeria police Force must, therefore, evolve with these realities." That claim sets expectations the tool must meet beyond simply existing.
Vigilant joins a crowded field of police and industry reporting channels. The Force launched Hawk Eye in 2017 as an anonymous reporting channel accepting video, voice and text, but by 2019 the system had largely fallen out of use. Rescue Me followed in 2021, offering emergency alerts and crime reporting; it has more than 100,000 downloads on Google Play but has faced heavy volumes of false alerts and scrutiny over the personal data it collects. A test during reporting requested an OTP three times without receiving one.
Other official mechanisms include the National Cybercrime Centre’s 24/7 portal operating across all 36 states, which currently reports more than 146,000 reports filed and more than ₦58 billion in recovered assets, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s Eagle Eye platform, live since July 2021. Banks and regulators also maintain channels: the Central Bank of Nigeria required fraud desks from 2015 and supports information-sharing through the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum and a NIBSS Industry Fraud Reporting Portal. Participation is uneven; in 2023 NIBSS said only 60 of 163 profiled financial institutions submitted fraud data through its portal.
Policy benchmarks already aim to push faster responses. In January 2026 the CBN said banks had agreed, via the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum, to target fraud-response times under 30 minutes, a standard not yet published industry-wide. Vigilant’s usefulness will therefore depend on adoption by citizens, willingness among banks and agencies to share data, and whether the app helps deliver measurable outcomes such as quicker responses and increased recoveries across the overlapping systems.
