BANE OF WEAK ARMOURY MANAGEMENT

The authorities should do more to stem proliferation of arms

The warning by the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW) Director General, Johnson Kokumo, that weak armoury management within security institutions is fuelling the proliferation of small arms and light weapons across the country should be taken seriously. “Numerous military and police operations in the North-East, North-West, and Niger Delta have stretched our forces thin,” he said while noting how leakages from poorly managed official stockpiles were arming criminals and undermining national security. “Weak armoury management and corruption have enabled weapons to leak from state stockpiles into criminal circles. This undermines Nigeria’s constitutional monopoly over the legitimate use of force.”

To the extent that such internal compromise and sabotage make fighting insecurity difficult, we hope there will be a thorough investigation of this revelation. But more importantly, given the overwhelming level of insecurity in the country, efforts should be made to contain the proliferation of these dangerous weapons. Kokumo has located a major challenge in the fact that Nigeria still relies on the 1959 Firearms Act which is obsolete and incapable of addressing today’s realities. “Weapons move across our borders in exchange for drugs, contraband, or cattle,” he argued while stressing that arms proliferation is not merely a security challenge but also one of governance and development. “These flows link arms trafficking with terrorism, smuggling, and human trafficking. The weapons themselves enable violence, but the deeper challenge lies in the structural weaknesses that allow them to thrive.”

 As we have stated repeatedly, 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.  

 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. It therefore 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, some individual citizens have also resorted to the acquisition of arms for personal security and protection. In several communities around the country, the deployment of armed vigilantes and traditional hunters armed with modern weapons has become commonplace.  

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 is 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. We can also not continue to rely on an obsolete law to deal with the menace.