ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS
The authorities must do more to contain the flow of illicit weapons
We doubt if anyone is taking the recent warning by the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW) against illegal possession of arms and weapons in the country seriously. The NCCSALW zonal director, Southeast, Okechukwu Ugo, a retired Major General in the Nigerian army, has identified Anambra and Imo as states with high prevalence of unlicensed arms in the zone. He warned possessors of illegal arms to return them immediately or face the wrath of the law. But empty threats and lamentations which have become the official response to this menace would not do.
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. And even for hunting, people no longer request official licensing. Since the state still remains the ultimate protector of the citizenry who are legally presumed unarmed, the task of protecting the people remains that of the federal government. 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 and unnecessary. This 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 sources of these dangerous weapons range from trafficking across porous land borders to leakages in our lax import procedures that have encouraged black market arms traffickers. There is hardly a month that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) would not announce the seizure of large cache of arms, ammunition, and military camouflage at some of our ports. The arms usually recovered include automatic single barrel rifles and pump action guns, among other weapons. Given the overwhelming level of insecurity in the country, efforts should be made to contain the proliferation of these dangerous weapons.
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.
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 around the country, the deployment of armed vigilantes and traditional hunters armed with modern weapons has become commonplace. This is also creating its own problems given the recent killings of some northern hunters in Edo State, following the discovery of dane guns in their vehicle.
Authorities in Nigeria should be concerned. 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-defence 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-defence hence the proliferation of illegal arms across the country.
