A consultative meeting President Muhammadu Buhari held recently with the Service Chiefs confirmed what is obvious to everybody: that the proliferation and stockpiling of weapons in the country ahead of the 2019 general elections have reached a dangerous level. Since the Fourth Republic, elections have been militarised, leading to loss of lives and property.
The expression of concern does not count; only effective and swift counter strategies from the security agencies do. The desperate political class accused of being masterminds of this eerie obsession should be stopped by all means. When gangsters, armed robbers and thugs are assembled, equipped with arms and ammunition, to intimidate, maim and kill political opponents, the contest for political power becomes anything but a democratic undertaking. The just concluded violent parties’ primaries offered a foretaste of what lies ahead.
However, the government should solely take the rap for surrendering its power to rogue elements. In ideal societies, only the state wields the power or the instruments of coercion. And this is why the Firearms Act 2004 prohibits unlawful possession of lethal weapons. Under the law, some categories of arms and ammunition are totally outlawed. Ironically, such weapons are all over the place. The President, therefore, should interdict the security agencies and allied services for failing in their duty to halt the drift.
Although the Nigeria Customs Service has intercepted a few containers bearing illegal arms, the fact is that for every seizure made, many more of such cargoes might have passed through undetected, simply because of the complicity of security agents. In the case of the 661 pump-action guns that were intercepted in Lagos last year, Mahmud Hassan, one of the five suspects undergoing trial for the contraband, told the court that they bribed State Security Service operatives with N1 million to facilitate the clearance.
Another cargo with 440 guns said to have been imported from Turkey, also landed at Tin Can Island port last year, just as Customs officials in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, impounded a shipment with 620 sets of military uniforms and 10,100 military T-shirts in July. Within the same period, the Nigerian Army intercepted some trucks laden with 300,000 cartridges for pump-action rifles, transiting through Ogun State. The consignments were suspected to have entered Nigeria through Benin Republic, indicating an influx of arms through land and sea borders.
For long, this awful scenario has been a source of public anxiety, resulting in inquests into it by the National Assembly. At a House of Representatives investigation by its Joint Committees on Customs and Excise and National Intelligence into the matter in November 2017, the SSS said weapons in the ordnance of a sister agency, whose identity was not disclosed, easily disappear, adding: “In the armoury, no place was broken into, but the weapons were missing….” According to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, people illegally go about with weapons as if they are fashion accessories.
A former Vice-President revealed in a BBC Hausa interview in 2013, how some governors may have initiated the gun scourge in our elections by arming thugs to rig elections: “I met and told them that if they used them and after winning election, they failed to provide them with jobs, they will rise against the people in their states.” It has been argued that this was how the seeds of armed militancy in the Niger Delta and Boko Haram in the North-East were sowed.
Indeed, this macabre drama now defines the tone of the sectarian, tribal and communal crises occurring unremittingly in Plateau, Benue, Southern Kaduna, Taraba villages and the genocidal rampage of Fulani herdsmen. Thousands of lives have been lost to these mindless killings, more than in a formal armed conflict. Nobody seems to be safe, including the military and policemen, whose personnel are sometimes killed, kidnapped or beheaded by armed men. The disappearance of Idris Alkali, a retired major-general, in Plateau State, whose shallow grave was recently discovered, is a typical example.
This cycle of insecurity was why the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, in March directed police commands in the 36 states and Abuja, to mop up illegal arms and ammunition. A 21-day ultimatum was issued for bearers of such weapons to either surrender them or risk being arrested, investigated and prosecuted in line with the law. The service chiefs’ alarm underscores the fact that outlaws have dared the IG; unfortunately, without consequences.
Buhari and his service chiefs, therefore, should redeem our elections from this martial-like vice grip through massive deployment of intelligence and technology. Busting illegal weaponry is a challenge the security agencies cannot run away from. Those caught in the labyrinth should be prosecuted expeditiously. But the country cannot buck this evil trend without going after those seemingly larger than life characters that mastermind the arms importation.
The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament had since 2012 warned that Nigeria harboured 350 million illicit small and light weapons out of 500 million circulating in West Africa. As the authorities have failed to defang this blithe culture in the country’s democracy, the danger ahead, is in fact, tangible.
