Nigeria turning into ‘axis of arms’

So it was that at 14, Akpus began to manufacture arms and ammunition (the trade he was apprenticed in) from his local factory from where the supplies and purchases are made in secret. Like the tailors and carpenters, he has his loyal customers. Some are local hunters. But mostly, they are politicians, the police said, […]

So it was that at 14, Akpus began to manufacture arms and ammunition (the trade he was apprenticed in) from his local factory from where the supplies and purchases are made in secret. Like the tailors and carpenters, he has his loyal customers. Some are local hunters. But mostly, they are politicians, the police said, based on their investigations.
What would have been a fulfilling career for Akpus, after 13 years in the business, was truncated when he was arrested recently by the Civil Defence Corps in Nasarawa State for allegedly running an illegal arms factory. Posing as potential customers, the officers have gone to his factory to make some purchases from where they arrested him and recovered seven locally manufactured pistols and 17 live ammunitions. “The judge did not waste time in remanding him in prison custody,” said ASP Richard Akoji of the Nassarawa State police command of Akpus when he was arraigned in court recently.
What is most instructive about Akpus’ career as an arms manufacturer though is not the truncation of his career but the casualness with which the business is conducted despite the glaring danger it poses to national security, safety of lives and properties. Just like one will casually visit a tailor to be measured for an outfit, you could get a gun made to fit your specification if you visit the right manufacturer.
The manufacture, sale and importation of illegal arms is big business in Nigeria. Even though Nigeria is not a country at war it has 70% of the illegal stockpile of arms and ammunition in the whole of West Africa, said Major General C.R.U Iherike (rtd), the chairman of the National Task Force to Combat Illegal Importation of Goods, Small Arms, Ammunition and Light Weapons (NATFORCE), a body inaugurated by the government in June, 2009 to combat the proliferation of illegal arms in the country. General Iherike cited the office of the National Security Advisor as the source of his figures.
Triggers of the arms race
While Nigeria might not be at war, it exhibits the symptoms of fear, suspicion, intolerance, lawlessness and fierce competition among contending forces along political, ethnic and religious lines. All these factors provide a highly combustible mix as the nation prepares for a general election in 2011.
Just like Nasarawa, a neighbouring state, Plateau State has a thriving industry in the manufacture of illegal arms and the circulation of more sophisticated imported versions. The recurrent crisis in Jos has led to various transformations in terms of weaponry used by the contending forces. Earlier, local weapons such as machetes, cutlasses and knives were used. Later, more sophisticated weapons such as AK47 and the like were deployed in the conflicts. Now one of the newest dimensions the conflict in the state has taken is in the use of explosives meant to destroy places perceived to belong to the opposition or rivals. On July 22 this year, the police bomb squad had to defuse a bomb planted at the house of one Shu’aibu Usman who was warned by some people not to renovate his house after it was razed down in an earlier crisis that hit the state in 2008. “If not discovered,” said the Plateau State Commissioner of Police, Ikechukwu Aduba, “the bomb would have been a catastrophe considering the nature of the explosives which are in the class of dynamites.”
On April 12 at Barkin Akawu in Dadin Kowa area of Jos South Local Government Area an illegal explosive manufacturer, Abdussamad, lost his arm while two others were also injured while the explosives he was working with detonated. And on August 4th, the Plateau State police command arrested the village head of Nassarawa in Langtang South Local Government Area of the state, Chief Danterl Bongwat and 11 others with AK47 rifles and ammunitions.
The Plateau police commissioner said the suspected gang specializes in stealing weaponry from policemen and from barracks. But more shocking was the discovery of an arms factory where guns and bullets are produced at Kuru in Jos South Local Government Area. The suspects arrested in connection with the arms factory are Solomon Mantep, Dorcas Habila and Jummai Gyang. The leader of the gang is still at large. Weapons recovered at the factory, said CP Aduba are three pistols, seven guns, AK47 bayonet, three hand drilling machines, a filing machine and live ammunitions.
The Kuru arms factory was uncovered by the police in the course of interrogating some four suspects who killed a veterinary doctor in Kuru on 17 October this year.
Chris Kwaja, a lecturer with the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies, University of Jos blames the arms build-up on politicians and the unsafe atmosphere they have created in their quest for power. He said, “The proliferation of arms is a threat to national security, it shows how people can be violent in playing politics, it tells us how unprepared the political class is in playing the game. Some of them know they cannot win elections, therefore they have to resort to violence because they see politics as a do-or- die affair and that is why you see this proliferation of arms.”
On his part, Chairman, Plateau State Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN), Rev. Philip Dafes told Weekly Trust that the proliferation of arms across the country are signs of wickedness on the part of the people and further blamed both Christians and Muslims for not adhering to the true teachings of the two holy books. He said the arms build-up in the country “is not about election alone, it is just that some people are wicked”.
Enemies of State
While the arms proliferation in Plateau State epitomize the desperate measures neighbours adopt to gain political dominance against each other, Borno State epitomizes a different strain of the arms build up as this time religious fundamentalists not comfortable with the train of modernity and democratization, take up arms against the State. The actors here are the members of the Boko Haram religious sect. Borno State is also important in the arms race in the country because its porous borders with neighbouring African countries makes it an attractive route for the smuggling of sophisticated arms into the country.
Sometime in 2008 a Chadian immigrant, Abubakar Anour was arrested by the police with two AK47 riffles and 54 rounds of ammunition on the Nigerian side of the Gamboru border in Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State. The suspect told journalists then that somebody from his country gave him the rifles to assist him in crossing over to Nigeria and that he was not a rebel, contrary to what immigration officials allege, but a law- abiding citizen of his country.
Also in the same year, immigration officials paraded a Cameroonian who was arrested with 33 rounds of ammunition, 7 magazines, two cutlasses and a host of local charms along the same border. Further interrogation of the suspect led to the discovery of more ammunition hidden in the bush along the same border.
Security experts believe that with the Nigeria’s porous borders in Borno State, mass smuggling of arms into the country through these borders is imminent. 
The State Security Service (SSS) in August this year paraded four persons, Amos Akila, Daniel Chayi Gyang, Mbono Musa and Yakubu Sule for allegedly trying to smuggle dozens of AK47 riffles along with a rocket launcher and a grenade to Jos. Also paraded is Ilesha Emmanuel who was said to have loaded dozens of AK47 riffles and a general purpose machine gun with dried fish in a taxi wagon. Amos Akila, 29, who is believed to be the ring leader of the gang told journalists that one Yusuf sent the weapons to him from Cameroon to hand over to one Jauro who lives in Jos but that the weapons were to be handed over in Bauchi.    
The latest in the intercept of arms by the security agencies is the arrest last week of a 35-year-old woman, Lucy Dangana who was arrested with 10AK 37 rifles and 9 magazines by the Borno State police command.  Borno State commissioner of police, Muhammed J. Abubakar said the woman was intercepted with the arms at Dabar Masara  in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State on her way to Doron Baga from Mederina in Chad Republic. The arms, Weekly Trust learnt, was said to have been transported by boat through Kofia in Cameroon.
CP Abubakar also said that police investigation revealed that the woman was aiding Boko Haram religious fundamentalist who have for some time now been unleashing terror on the people of Borno. The woman, a mother of seven, concealed the rifles in four bags of maize to disguise the true contents.
The Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Immigrations Service, Borno State command, A.K Yerima Misau told Weekly Trust that in the last six months over 300 ammunitions and dozens of AK rifles were intercepted along the Nigerian borders in the state, while 5 persons were arrested and handed over to the police. He said the arms were intercepted through stop and search exercise by the immigration men on the border areas. The immigration spokesman said the exercise is predicated on the need to prevent smuggling of arms into the country, especially as the 2011 elections approaches.
The kingpins of the arms race
All these arms build-up is child’s play when compared with the arms build up in the Niger Delta where militant groups have been waging a long violent campaign against the Nigerian State. After an amnesty was declared by the federal government to encourage the militants to drop their arms, the whole arrangement seem to have unravel with the Nigerian military launching aerial attacks against militants’ stronghold in the creeks of the Niger Delta. The failure of the amnesty programme poses grave concern as the 2011 election approaches because once again the militants will be playing an influential role helping politicians in the Niger Delta to prevail against their rivals. The militants were in fact, the original creation of the politicians who used them first as thugs before they later Metamorphosed into freedom fighters, even though many argue they are criminal elements.
As of October 2009, when a few of the militants surrendered their arms a total of 2,760 assorted guns, 287, 445 ammunitions of different caliber, 18 gun-boats, 763 dynamites, 1,090 dynamite caps, 3, 155 magazines and several other military accessories like dynamite cables, bullet proof jackets and jack-knives were recovered at the expiration of the presidential amnesty period last. Even then, it was widely believed that the militants only surrendered a small fraction of their cache of arms, as the amnesty was doomed to fail, just as it seems to have in the past weeks.
The latest discovery of rocket launchers at the Lagos port, shipped from Iran and headed allegedly for the Hamas in Palestine, has added yet another international dimension to the arms proliferation in Nigeria. The question is has Nigeria become not only West Africa’s biggest port for illegal arms but also one of the world’s key transit point for the smuggle of illegal arms? This status, combined with the internal crisis in the political system in the country, especially as another general election approaches in a few months’ time, poses a worrisome facet to the nation’s national security.