Too many guns in private hands endanger the security of the nation
Last week seizure at the Tincan Island Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) of large cache of arms, ammunition and military camouflage along with illicit drugs should compel serious action from relevant authorities. The arms recovered include automatic single barrel rifles and pump action guns, among other weapons. Since the suspects have been arrested, we hope there will be a thorough investigation. But more importantly, given the overwhelming level of insecurity in the country, efforts should be made to contain the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW).
Quoting statistics from a Swiss-based institution on the issue, former Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, (NIMASA) Director General, Dakuku Peterside, recently said that in 2020, Nigeria had an estimated 6.2 million of arms in the hands of civilians, excluding those of the military and law enforcement agencies, adding, “This means that 3.21 per 100 persons in Nigeria have firearms, whereas 224,200 and 362,400 guns were in the possession of the military and other law enforcement agencies, respectively.” Yet sources of these dangerous weapons range from trafficking across porous land borders to leakages in our lax import procedures.
Nigeria, according to reports, accounts for at least 70 per cent of the illegal SALWs circulating within the West African sub-region, most of them in the hands of sundry criminal cartels and lone wolves. It stands to reason that with access to abundant illegal weapons the rogue elements in our midst have become more fortified and hence less amenable to entreaties to make peace. Meanwhile it was such easy access to SALWs by some unscrupulous elements that resulted in total breakdown of law and order in some of the failed states in Africa of which Somalia is a prime example.
With these illegal firearms, violent crime is no longer just social deviance but a thriving enterprise by many unscrupulous Nigerians with dire consequences for peace and national security. To counterbalance the threat to life and property by these armed criminals, individual citizens have resorted to the acquisition of arms for personal security and protection. In several communities across the country, the deployment of armed vigilantes and traditional hunters armed with modern weapons has become commonplace.
The proliferation of arms in private civilian hands is perhaps the readiest sign that the Nigerian state has vastly receded in terms of inability to defend its territory as well as the lives and property of citizens. Ordinarily, peace and order are only guaranteed because citizens surrender their right of self-defense to the overarching force of the state. Once this shield of collective sovereign protection and security begins to cave in, individual citizens resort to self-defense hence the proliferation of illegal arms across the country.
Since Nigeria has no constitutional provision on the right to bear arms, all such weapons in the hands of civilians remain illegal except by license for hunting and other sport. The state still officially remains the ultimate protector of the citizenry who are legally presumed unarmed. Therefore, the task of protecting the people remains that of the state. But it is a task that can only be performed in tandem with strengthening the security of citizens to make illegal possession of firearms unattractive. It must proceed through a programme of illegal arms decommissioning and recovery plus the reinforcement of existing gun laws to penalise illegal possession of arms.
The National Commission for the Coordination and Control of Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW) should get serious. At a period of lean resources, employing about 300,000 personnel across the federation, as it suggests, offers no practical solution to the challenge at hand.
