It’s been almost five years since the first brutal attack was launched by the irascible islamic sect, Boko Haram.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The violence which was carried out on the 26th of July, 2009 saw a band of heavily armed men storm a police station in Bauchi leading to the gruesome murder of six people and leaving hundreds of mothers and children homeless.
In the time span it has taken the terrorist group to form a network of banditry across the Northern region, the blood of more than 5000 innocent civilians has caked on Nigerian soil.
And with justice for the dead far from sight, owing to government’s romantic stance on local insurgency as well as the rapid proliferation of small arms and light weapons through the boarders and unto the streets of coastal cities, the situation may spiral out of control if left unchecked.
The recent citing of young northerners hawking double-edged swords and large razor-sharp machetes in broad daylight at the Mile 12 market in the Ketu district of Lagos sent a chill down the spine of many on-lookers.
A trader who sells her wares along the same road said that the weapon-hawkers “just came not long ago and started selling the big knives. They used to sell small cutlass before, but now that they have started with these type we are wondering what is happening.”
The brazen display of confidence by the ‘arms dealers’ brings to question the level of safety of lives and property in a metropolis like Lagos, especially with the recent explosions at the Apapa tank farms which has been alluded to the activities of Boko Haram.
WhenNaija247newsasked the Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO) of the Nigeria Police, Ag. Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu to shed insight on what his organisation is doing to curb the malaise, he said, “If you are talking about daggers and machetes, there are some parts of this country where these things are normal but anyone going about armed in public places will be arrested and dealt with.”
Surprisingly, without prompting, he admitted to the basket nature of the coastal borders spanning 4047 km in length after which he made the standard speech, “We all know the borders are wide and porous. What the Police do, is to collaborate with other security agencies at the border and we have made a lot of seizures of illegal arms, so we are doing our best.”
Barely four months ago, a highly sophisticated Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), aT-55 armoured tank, was driven by Boko Haram insurgents through the same borders supposedly protected by security agencies, as an addition to their arsenal.
Although the tank was seized by the Nigerian Army, after a fierce battle in Konduga, Borno State, the confiscation came as an alarming warning of how much leeway the insurgents and other armed bandits have as well as the rate at which arms fly in and out of the country unchecked.
Reports have it that out of the estimated 10 million small arms currently in circulation within the entire continent, Nigeria accounts for about 4.3 million.
With the 2015 elections around the corner, the growing presence of light weapons in circulation in-country is, to put it succinctly, dangerous.
In a move aimed at dealing with the security challenge facing the nation, one year ago, President Goodluck Jonathan approved the establishment of a committee to check the spread of small weapons often used in wreaking havoc by restive individuals across the country.
The team chaired by Ambassador Emmanuel Imohe is yet to publicly make any viable impact on the matter. While the nation is struggling to stem the raging tide of violence on its shores, the Imohe led-committee has, for the last twelve months, been ‘modernizing’ and ‘upgrading’ a law.
In his words, “You cannot resolve the issue of insecurity in the country without first dealing with the problem of proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Our aim is to first modernise the law and the second one is to upgrade our committee into a commission as demanded by the ECOWAS convention.”
Between 1990 and 1999, 12,000 people have been arrested in relation to arms trafficking and illegal possession of weapons, yet fewer than 50 of these people were successfully prosecuted and even less in the last decade.