Nigeria produces 70 per cent of W/Africa’s illegal weapons —Army
The Nigerian Army on Saturday stated that 70 per cent of the 10 million illegal weapons in West African are produced in Nigeria.
The Chief of Army
Standards and Evaluation, Major-General Shehu Abdulkadir, gave the
figure in his paper entitled, ‘The challenges of internal security and
implications for national development’ at the 7th annual Ramadan lecture
of Muslim Media Practitioners of Nigeria in Abuja.
According to him, the
expensive nature of the management of security has severely limited the
ability of the army to effectively combat terrorism and general
insecurity in the country.
He said the high rate of
illegal procurement and use of illicit weapons in the country were
indexed by their intermittent seizure by border control officers and the
frequency of deployment of these arms in conflict and crime scenes.
Abdulkadir said, “Out of
approximately 500 million illicit weapons in circulation worldwide in
2004, it was estimated that about 100 million are in sub-Saharan Africa,
with eight to 10 million concentrated in the West African sub-region.
Regrettably, more than half of these Small Arms and Light Weapons are in
the hands of non-state actors and criminal groups.
“Nigeria is both a
producer and consumer of SALW in the West African sub-region. Although
it is difficult to determine the exact quantity of illegal SALW
circulating within or penetrating into Nigeria, it is estimated that
over 70 per cent of eight to 10 million illegal weapons in West Africa
are in Nigeria.”
These illegal weapons
circulating in Nigeria, Abdulkadir added, are “manifested in the level
of human casualities and material damage recorded in the aftermath of
their use in the country. It can therefore be best left to imagination,
the consequences of this situation.”
The army chief also
decried the fact that access to illegal weapons made criminals and
militants bolder when facing security agents, which made it more
difficult to fight them.
He described security
management as “a very expensive venture,” adding that the Federal
Government had to spread resources among competing needs and that the
Armed Forces had to manage scarce resources to carry out their duties.
He, however, stated that
the government, in recent times, had increased funding to the security
sector, which would go a long way in alleviating the problem of
resources.
While describing Nigeria
as a strong state, irrespective of what was bandied about by some
interests, he said, “Several issues that the country had weathered in
the past and is still handling presently have made many states to fall.
Of course, some entities claim that Nigeria is a failed state or is
tending towards one, but this is debatable.”
Also, the lecture, Mr. Nurudeen
Abdulmalik challenged the Federal Government to find lasting solutions
to the multifaceted problems bedevilling the nation.
