A COUNTRY THAT ARMS KILLERS

Kene Obiezu writes that those arming the terrorists in Nigeria should be exposed

In a country where security personnel are neither sufficiently remunerated nor adequately armed to protect the tax payer, it is bemusedly ironical that small arms and ammunition in staggering numbers unaccountably float into the arms of those who kill Nigerians.

Two reports about arms in Nigeria`s season of insecurity recently jarred the bones of Nigerians leaking in the process an inexorable link between stray firearms and insecurity.

The first report rose from the Nigeria Police itself which said that between January and December 2021, it recovered no less than 1,889 weapons and 52,577 rounds of live ammunition from those who had no business having them. According to the spokesperson for the Nigeria Police Force, CP Frank Mba, the recovered weapons included general purpose machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade, variants of Avtomat Kalashnikov, with the popular ones being AK- 47 and AK-49, and some locally-fabricated weapons.

If the report from the Nigeria Police was not chilling enough, the Auditor General of the Federation had more apocalyptic revelations coming for Nigerians. In a report referenced AuGF/AR.2019/02 dated September 15,2021 and addressed to the Clerk to the National Assembly, the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAuGF) disclosed that about 178,459 different types of arms and ammunition disappeared from the Nigeria Police armoury in 2019, without any trace or formal report on their whereabouts. Of the figure, 88,078 were AK-47 rifles and 3,907 assorted rifles and pistols from different formations nationwide. These could not be accounted for as of January 2020.

In a country of diarrheal data, the alarmed can be sure that the number of arms and ammunition missing from the Nigeria Police armoury in the period in question was north of the figures from the office of the Auditor General. It raises the question of where the weapons are.

The Nigeria Police Force has said that there are in the country factories where these small arms are manufactured. In other words, they are businesses run by people. Invariably, those who run these factories of fatalities are merchants of deaths, vampire bats who suck the blood of Nigerians. It begs the question if the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria whose business it is to manufacture arms and ammunition for Nigeria now competes with killers who set up rival factories and smile to the bank regularly. Again, it is the Police that is firmly in the eye of the storm. A Police Force unable to properly police the country that pays it is now losing arms to faceless, nameless and numberless killers.

The Presidency has alluded to the influx of weapons from countries where the rule of law has since taken a leave with chaos reigning supreme. If a sea of weapons indeed flows out from lawless countries like Libya where the environments breed killers masquerading as freedom fighters under weasel-like characters, has the Giant of Africa become so stripped of strength that mushrooming mice now pull it all over the place?

At the end of guns, existential questions are being asked of a country beloved even by the gods. Bizarrely, a royal country makes its throne on a keg of gunpower. A country of unerring marksmen is now in danger of pulling the trigger on itself. Yet, some people profit with the chaos chewing up the country`s Northwest and Northeast at the hands of terrorists servicing the multiple streams of their incomes.

It was always going to be a nightmare of cyclopean proportions if Nigeria was to slide into the epic insecurity consuming African countries like Somalia, Mali and Libya to mention but a few. Insecurity in the Giant of Africa was always going to pose a gigantic problem not only to the citizens of the country or West Africa but Africa as a whole.

Today, Nigeria`s worst fears are being realized with many of the triggers pulled on Nigerians coming from within the country or otherwise being the macabre cross-border merchandise of those for whom blood profiteering is a billion-naira business. Meanwhile, insecurity continues to pound a once towering country into ruins. In Northwest Nigeria, bandits run free and wild, terrifying communities, amplifying agony and multiplying their millions.

In Northeast Nigeria, Boko Haram and ISWAP continue their malignant campaign of death, blazing a trail of blood, bile and bombed buildings. Women and girls have especially known persecution, marched to the precipice by those who mouth the name of a benevolent God in vain.

Those who annihilate Nigerian communities do not do so with their bare hands. Because their cowardice is inherent, no sooner would they attack communities than they would be overrun by residents many of whom have been hardened by the difficulties of rural life. Those who annihilate entire communities are often well armed. Many times, they wield arms superior to what Nigeria`s security forces boast. There have also been allegations, many of them credible, of how some members of Nigeria`s security forces sell arms to those who hunt Nigerians. When Nigeria`s security forces come under attack, arms and ammunition are seized.

Undoubtedly, it is time Nigerians knew those who arm, those who disarm those who should protect Nigerians. Who are those who put into the hands of killers the guns which silence innocent children? Who are those who supply killers the mortar bombs that shell communities and plunge families into perpetual grief? Who are those who provide the weapons which panic even livestock while their owners flee to preserve life and limb?

Nigerians have a troubled relationship with the Police. If anything, the leaks which allow arms disappear with no trace from the armoury of the Police are about to aggravate a severely strained relationship.

Why arms will disappear with no trace and without heads rolling remains a troubling question. But things cannot continue like this. As with the war against corruption, the war against insecurity demands inviolable accountability. Terror cannot be fought terror in the dark. Terror thrives in darkness. To uproot it, it has to be brought into light. Bringing it into light invariably means exposing those who arm terrorists in Nigeria. Until this is done, the war against terror will remain clouded by a mist of collusion and complicity.

A lot of in-house cleaning also has to be done within Nigeria`s security forces. In the Igbo country, it is the house mice that tells the bush mice where the fish in the house is. Nigeria must hurry before Armageddon is upon it like the pangs of childbirth.

Keneobiezu@gmail.com