- Time to streamline hiring of security personnel and to monitor arms meant to secure the nation
The culture of impunity that led to the change of government in 2015 seems to be very much in place in the country’s security sector. At a public hearing of the House of Representatives’ Joint Committee on Customs and Excise and National Intelligence on Influx of Small Arms into the country, the Director of Operations of Department of State Security (DSS), Godwin Etang, revealed that many individuals in the military and other security agencies are in the habit of selling arms to criminals.
Such acts encourage various forms of criminality—armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, assassination, etc., and have the potential to destabilise the population that the arms were provided to protect. If not properly addressed, such criminality has the tendency to cause further erosion of trust between citizens and security agents.
The DSS’ director of operations further revealed that the agency “conducted more than 27 operations and arrested more than 30 persons involved in the supply of arms and ammunition and some of them are serving security men.” He added that the reason for this is that “some agencies have over a period of time recruited people who were before cultists and armed robbers and are now wearing uniforms.”
We view the news about this criminal habit of persons paid to secure the state and its citizens as alarming, to say the least. Indeed, it is shocking that citizens provided with arms to secure life and property in the country feel at ease to turn legal arms in their custody into illegal arms in the hands of criminal elements. If such revelation had come from other sources like the media, and not from the DSS, many partisan citizens could have taken it to be an attempt to smear the character of men in uniform.
We call on the Federal Government, to which all security agencies are responsible, to do the needful immediately, given the danger inherent in such heinous acts.
In the context of illegal transfer of arms and ammunition to people who should not have access to them, by persons who are paid to hold such arms in trust, any wonder that Boko Haram has existed for years, or that kidnapping has been on the rise? Any wonder that violent herdsmen from within and outside the country carry combat weapons such as AK-47 to kill or harass innocent farmers? And is the mushrooming of militancy in different parts of the country surprising, or that there is growing disaffection between citizens and security personnel?
We consider it ironical that at a time that sanity should have returned to all arms of government, many citizens in sensitive agencies still find the environment conducive to impunity, two years into a regime of anti-corruption war. We ask the Federal Government to give the revelations by the DSS serious and immediate attention by ensuring, in the short-run, speedy trial of individuals that have been involved in the sale of arms to criminals. And in the long-run, there is a need for public inquiry into existing regulations and practices guiding hiring of security personnel; management of materials sensitive to national security; and post-severance access to official arms and ammunition by security personnel.
We commend the DSS for not choosing to cover up such sabotage of the country’s security by bad eggs in the security service. We, however, call on the service to do more investigation on the abuse of trust on the part of serving personnel in the entire security sector. With this kind of news, the ministers of defence and internal affairs have a challenge requiring immediate action. Citizens have a right to believe that those paid to secure them are not criminals in uniform.
