Enamoured of the gains from the recent whistle-blowing policy in the recovery of looted funds, the Federal Government has extended it to the mopping up of illegal arms and ammunition in wrong hands. This is a good idea. The proliferation of illegal weapons has aggravated insecurity in the country to a level never experienced before. Lives of not just the ordinary folks, but of police and military personnel, have been needlessly wasted. When the lives of security operatives, the very vanguards of national security, are imperiled, then everyone should be jolted.
The government has offered to give mouth-watering incentives to any whistle-blower. At the global parliamentary conference in Washington DC, United States, in April, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, had told the world, “We are going after those who have stolen our money. We have put in place a very successful whistle-blower programme that is delivering results and allows those who report illicit activity to receive up to five per cent of any funds that we recover.” The response has been so fabulous that in just four months, it has yielded N17bn, said the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, last week.
The new phase of the initiative deals with locating weapons of intimidation, terror and death that affect the entire society. Not even children have been immune to the havoc therein. The government is prepared to incentivise Nigerians to rid the country of this menace. As a result, it has directed the office of the National Security Adviser to work out the modality. This is a public safety campaign we believe not a few will be enlisted. Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremdu, first made the call for the policy to be extended to illegal arms recovery when he received a delegation of Human Rights Writers Association in his office last month. The degree of the carnage in the Southern Kaduna attacks, which the Senate committee had investigated, but was asked to deepen its enquiry, the senator said, made such an extension inevitable.
Indeed, Southern Kaduna is not the only killing field; numerous communities in Benue, Plateau, Anambra, Nasarawa, Rivers, Imo, Bayelsa, Zamfara, Ogun and Lagos states have become graveyards of sorts, as herdsmen, armed robbers, kidnappers and rival cult groups periodically run riot. Inspired by AK 47 rifles in their possession, Fulani herdsmen in January sent over 800 people to their untimely graves in Kaduna, according to figures from the Roman Catholic Church. More of such killings have occurred since then, with the security agencies being seemingly powerless. Many rural women no longer go to their farmlands, out of fear of being killed or raped at gunpoint.
In an ambush by the Ombatse cult group in 2013, 95 security men were gunned down in Nasarawa State. The perpetrators were never arrested. Add this to the March 2015 raid of a bank near the Lekki/Ikoyi Link Bridge, Lagos by 12 armed robbers who killed six persons that included policemen on patrol, countless audacious breaches of military barracks in the North-East by Islamic fundamentalists, and the United Nations report that 350 million out of estimated 500 million small arms and light weapons in West Africa are in Nigeria, the augury becomes scarier.
From our sea and land borders, these weapons flow into the country and, in most cases, with the connivance of Customs officials and other security personnel. The most recent case was in January, when 661 pump action rifles imported from China were impounded. The illegal weapons, masked with steel doors and other goods, were cleared by compromised officials at the port before detectives from the Federal Operations Unit intercepted the consignment at Mile 2, Lagos, following a tip-off. Also, 13 containers laden with illegal arms were intercepted at the Lagos port by Customs officials in 2013.
What is intriguing is that the public is never fed with further information on these seizures. This could mean that the contraband may have been sold or even appropriated by corrupt security personnel, the same way the Sani Abacha recovered loot was re-looted by previous administrations. Such weapons should be publicly destroyed as was the case in Kenya in November 2016, where over 5,250 firearms seized by the authorities were set ablaze.
At the North-Eastern border with Cameroon, illicit weapons meant for Boko Haram fighters are routinely seized by the military. “Over 288 rifles, 35 rocket-propelled guns, as well as 35 locally made IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were recovered after a fierce encounter at Abugasse, Cameroon, close to the Chadian border,” military authorities said in 2014. Many of such consignments might have found their way into the country unnoticed, given its porous land borders. Alarmingly, an official report during the last administration had put the number of illegal land routes to the country at 1,497.
Insurgents in the Niger Delta have surrendered thousands of arms under the amnesty programme. Outside this framework, some governors in collaboration with their state police commands have mopped up arms and ammunition from hoodlums, the quantity of which nobody could have imagined they possessed. This was demonstrated in November 2016, when gangsters surrendered 911 AK47 riles and 7,363 rounds of ammunition in Rivers State. Where are these guns? There are more.
From criminal hideouts in Anambra, Edo and Rivers states, more than 8,741 arms and 7,014 ammunition and 164 loaded magazines in AK47 rifles were seized in 2014. When exhibits in the trial of suspected kidnappers in Anambra State during this period showed that their weaponry had dwarfed the ordnance of some police formations, it became necessary for this new campaign against illegal gun epidemic to be taken seriously. Displayed in court were AK47 rifles, GPMG rifles, rockets, rocket propellers/launcher, 5,830 AK47 ammunition and 1,135 rounds of ammunition for GPMG rifles.
These revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. This is why illegal arms recovery through whistle-blowing is a most welcome, pragmatic initiative that will save lives, and therefore requires the support of all for it to succeed.
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