Guns for sale

According to the group, guns were being sold openly at the border areas and that an A-K 47, with 20 rounds of ammunition, sold for N10,000. This revelation should be cause for worry because of its implications for the incidents of crimes and other forms of violence that bedevilled the country in recent years. It […]

According to the group, guns were being sold openly at the border areas and that an A-K 47, with 20 rounds of ammunition, sold for N10,000. This revelation should be cause for worry because of its implications for the incidents of crimes and other forms of violence that bedevilled the country in recent years. It also accentuates the fact that not enough is being done to keep out or mop up these weapons by the various government organs charged with doing so.
The proliferation of weapons, according to many accounts, emerged as an outcome of the many years of military rule Nigeria witnessed, and the culture of violence that ensued.
But if such proliferation can be attributed to military rule, the demand for them has gone beyond that of petty thieves and armed robbers. The weapons have now become tools to settle community disputes that were once amicably resolved through mediation. These days, communal conflicts are causes of casualties and destruction of property. Ease of access to weapons has contributed to the escalation of communal conflicts across the country as no region has been spared the bloody disputes that have occurred over differences on community boundaries, grazing lands and other matters.
Yet nowhere has the debilitating impact of weapons been telling than in the Niger Delta crisis and Boko Haram insurgency. Possessing them in large quantity one turned the Niger delta region into a virtual war zone, where heavily armed militants and bands of criminals made that part of Nigeria almost ungovernable. Recourse to use of force to quell the militancy could achieve only so much in limiting its destructive impact in the region. The militants sabotaged economic installations, targeting oil pipelines and embarking on bunkering as well as kidnapping for ransom. They were also amenable to being used by foreign and local criminal groups to steal crude oil and transport it through the creeks into waiting ocean tankers.  It had to take the institution of the amnesty programme to somewhat lessen the nefarious activities of the militancy.
The Boko Haram insurgency may be ebbing, but the devastating human and material tolls that followed its wake cannot easily be forgotten.  
The enormity that the challenge proliferation of weapons poses to the peace and security of Nigeria and indeed other parts of the sub-region cannot therefore be overstated.
To arrest the menace, the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) instituted an organ charged with combating the crisis. Sadly, the ever- pervasiveness of the weapons indicates the organ is having a hard time surmounting the challenge. The member states would have to redouble their efforts and rededicate themselves to combating the crisis of illegal weapons by ensuring that specific state organs such as customs, immigration departments as well as the police forces and other security agencies are alive to their duties.
Individual countries can complement the effort of the regional bloc by establishing bodies that would undertake the mopping up of illegal weapons and making their possession illegal and liable to stiff sanctions.