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AK-47 sells for N 27,000 • Police mopping them up – Frank Mba
Against the backdrop
of mounting security challenges in Nigeria arising from the Boko Haram
insurgency and ethno-religious crisis in the north as well as armed robbery and
kidnapping in the south, it has been estimated that there are about one million
illegally held guns in the country in civilian hands. The market price for most
popular of them all, the AK-47 pattern of assault weapon, goes for $180 (about
N27,000). While the total number of guns in the hands of civilians is put at
two million, only half is said to be registered.
The remainder are reportedly
held by criminals and people who need to protect themselves from violent
crimes, but could not go through the whole hog of arms registration. The two
million guns in civilian hands put Nigeria at number 34 position in a
comparison of privately owned guns in 178 countries, according to findings by
an international gun control advocacy group. Only recently, President Goodluck
Jonathan expressed worries over the proliferation of small arms in the hands of
non-state actors in Nigeria which he added poses security challenges and
threatens the peace of the country. He partly blamed technological
globalisation for making the acquisition of such small but potent, cheap and
easy to come-by arms. He has gone a step further by setting up a 17-member
Presidential Committee on Small and Light Weapons headed by Ambassador Emmanuel
Imohe to address the problem.
The committee
certainly has a lot to do going by the data provided by GunPolicy.org, which
also put the number of firearms in possession of the Defence forces at 179,550
and that of the police at 360,000. GunPolicy.org is hosted by the Sydney School
of Public Health at the University of Sydney, Australian. Through it, the
school provides internationally recognized information on global and regional
armed violence and gun control mechanism. Firearms ownership is regulated in
Nigeria under the Firearms Act. An applicant for a firearm licence must pass
background checks which consider criminal, mental and addiction records, while
illicit possession of firearms carries a maximum of five years imprisonment.
The Spokesperson of the State Security Service (SSS) Ms. Merrylin Ogah, was not
available to respond to Daily Newswatch’s inquiry on what the department was
doing about the challenges of illegal arms in the country. When contacted on
phone, she said she was travelling on official engagement and would only be
available for comments when she returned to Abuja. The Nigeria Police Force,
however, said it was already engaged in mopping up illicit guns in circulation
in the country. The Force Public Relations Officer, Mr Frank Mba, who stated
this, noted that illegal guns is a major source of concern to the police and
other security agencies in the country. “The truth is that the proliferation of
small and light weapons is a concern to not only the Nigeria Police, but also
other stakeholders in security community,” he told Daily Newswatch in his
office at Force Headquarters, Louis Edet House, Abuja.
Giving a background to
the proliferation of illicit guns in the country, the Chief Superintendent of
Police said “this is a challenge that has become global and it is not just a
challenge of Nigeria. The situation in West Africa sub region stems from the
fact that the sub region has actually witnessed so many conflicts within the
past one decade or thereabout. “There was a civil war in Liberia, Sierra Lone
and Ivory Coast. So, the whole of the Mano River Region comprising of Liberia,
Sierra lone, Ivory Coast and Guinea at a time was under serious threat of
destabilization by internal conflict and civil wars. We also have challenges in
the Sahel region where the activities of Al Qaeda in the Magreb also weakened
some of the national governments in those areas.
“There are challenges
in Mali, Libya, and civil war in Central African Republic as well as challenges
in Chad. These countries appear far at a time, but are not anymore.
Globalization has made it very easy for communication between and among
citizens of the world to take place in little or no time. These are challenges
that have actually complicated the issue bordering on the proliferation of
light weapons for us as a people, as a country and as a security agent.” As to
what was being done by the police to tackle the problem, Mba disclosed that,
“First of all, we have tried to take a very strong and deep look at our
borders. What the current Inspector General of Police (IGP), M.D. Abubakar, did
within his first two months in power was to strengthen police border patrol
department. He brought in a very experienced and operationally competent
Assistant Inspector General of Police to head the border patrol unit. He
procured more equipment for the operatives in the police border patrol unit,
more specialized vehicles and some of the vehicles are equipped with satellite
communication gadgets, because we discovered that in some of our borders,
particularly in the North, communication is the major problem.
This is because the
GSM service providers do not seem to operate very well in these areas. So, we
needed to come up with a total communication structure that will be able to
operate regardless of the availability of GSM services.” The police spokesman
also said, “Then, he (IGP) also provided specialized kinds of vehicles capable
of dealing with the challenges and other kinds of difficult terrain. Then, we
also did training and retraining for our border patrol units, particularly to
keep them properly prepared for contemporary challenges that have to do with
border monitoring and policing. “As soon as we finished doing that, we got back
to the waterways, because we also know that there are parts of Nigeria that are
littoral; meaning that those places are practically covered by water; just as
we have international land border, we also have international water borders. We
have strengthened the marine police unit; in fact the police have just carried
out a major reorganization of the marine police unit by creating what is called
the Marine Police Command headed by an AIG. This has brought the marine police
components, the inland-sea land waterways police and the Ports Authority police
under a central command.
This makes it easier
for the different components of the police units that are policing our
waterways and territorial waters to be on our palms to be able to communicate
effectively and ensure information sharing, dissemination; therefore central
control becomes very easy. All these changes took place between December last
year and now. We have intercepted about 15 vehicles that attempted to bring in
illegal weapons into this country. Our marine police unit patrolling these axes
have also made a large cache of discovery.” Mba revealed also that the police
were in synergy with other security outfits in the country and the Interpol on
the security challenge, stressing that, “We have tried to deepen our
partnership with the Nigeria Customs, bearing in mind that the Customs are
actually known to give critical inspection of imported goods into the country.
In the last one year, there have been so many instances of the Customs
intercepting arms and handing same over to the police without qualms. We have
also been able to establish a system whereby the police and the Customs share
intelligence particularly when Interpol intercept information concerning the
destination point of illicit weapons.”
Source: Daily Newswatch
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