A Wild, Wild Zamfara?

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

Several times in the last decade when the insecurity situation got out of hand, religious, traditional, community, political and sometimes even military leaders called on the people to defend themselves. It is extremely okay for people to defend themselves from attack. In fact, we have always done so. Right from primary school brawls and after-school street corner fights, if someone aimed a blow at my head, I always raised my hand in self-defense. The situation however changes if the attacker has a firearm.

Zamfara State Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle created a furore last week when he announced sweeping new security measures in response to renewed outrage by bandits in his state. For more than a decade, Zamfara State was the Ground Zero of banditry. It was second in suffering only to the Boko Haram carnage in Borno State. Since becoming governor in 2019, Matawalle tried many things, from initiating dialogue with bandit groups to closing local markets and petrol stations to closing down GSM phone service in the whole state.

There was a lull in recent months due to stepped up security and military operations but the recent abduction of a busload of GSM phone market traders who were returning to Gusau after a social trip to Sokoto State, as well as renewed siege by bandits on several communities that made thousands of people to flee their homes, drove Matawalle to the brink. At the weekend he launched the training of 5,000 Community Protection Guards in the state’s 19 emirates. A yawning gap in the plan is that it is not regionally coordinated with Zamfara’s neighbours. Matawalle had earlier announced the controversial measure that the state’s Police Commissioner should license citizens to own firearms in order to defend themselves from bandits.

Quite alright, the difference between terrorists, bandits, armed robbers and kidnappers on the one hand and law-abiding citizens on the other is firearms. Without firearms, no one could block a highway, pull passengers out of vehicles and carry them off into the bush, for example. Bandits could probably besiege a village even without firearms, as some intercommunal warriors do, but vigilantes could put up a good defence and there may not be mass slaughter. It is firearms that changed the equation. After splashing all around for a solution, Matawalle arrived at the stunning one that if everyone gets hold of a gun, the bandits will run with their tails between their legs.

He wasn’t the first person to tell citizens to defend themselves. At the height of Boko Haram terrorism when bombs were exploding at Sunday church services, then President of the Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] Pastor Oritsejafor told Christians to defend themselves. It sounded to many people like an incitement to inter-communal carnage given that some people saw the attacks as Muslims attacking Christians, never mind that Boko Haram killed everyone they could find.

Over the years, Katsina State Governor Aminu Masari, in a fit of anger following a horrendous bandit attack, also called on people to defend themselves from bandits, though he did not say how. It got more interesting when Defence Minister Bashir Magashi, a retired Army General, said the same thing. In a recent viral video, Emir of Katsina Abdulmumini Kabir Usman also said people should not just sit by and be killed. At the weekend, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God Pastor Adeboye was reported to have said the same thing in response to the horrific Owo church attack. He however clarified the next day that his was not a call to acquire guns but jaw bones of cows. It is doubtful if a truckload of jaw bones can deter a terrorist attack. After all, local vigilantes have much more lethal weapons such as bows and poisoned arrows, clubs, spears, swords and knives but all these proved inferior to firearms.

Matawalle’s firearms prescription immediately ran into legal, administrative and security road blocks. Chief of Defence Staff General Lucky Irabor kicked against it. Lawyers pointed out that the Zamfara CP, a federal officer, cannot possibly take orders from the governor on such a serious matter. In any case, the police have long banned the possession of firearms even for hunting. It is almost impossible these days for a civilian to get a firearms license, except perhaps if he was a senior security official.

Maybe mass ownership of firearms will stem certain types of terrorist crime. Last week when a gunman opened fire in a Texas church, video footage of the incident showed several worshippers immediately drew their own guns and fired at the attacker, killing him instantly. A lone gunman is however different from a concerted terrorist attack involving heavier weapons and many more attackers.

The big question everyone was asking in the wake of Matawalle’s suggestion was, how can we trust so many people with firearms even after the terrorism/banditry problem is over? Once people acquire firearms, which gives the owner an unbelievable sense of power, how do you hope to take if back one day? I remember a story that a young Army Captain told me in the 1990s. As part of a military exercise they were doing at Agenebode in Edo State, young officers were issued with revolvers. He said that night, three other young officers and himself jumped into a car and drove three times to Auchi and back, hoping to encounter armed robbers on the way! They were very disappointed when they did not encounter any robbers that night.

I once told this story to Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, the retired boss of the Nigeria Security Organisation [NSO] and argued that citizens could not be trusted to handle firearms. He however said, “Not if they are trained security personnel.” In other words, he believed that retired soldiers and policemen could be trusted to handle firearms responsibly. I regret that I did not pursue the discussion further and asked him for a clarification. Whether a distinction could be made, for example, between retired officers and other ranks. Personally, I may not fear a retired police DIG or a retired Army General owning a revolver, but I sure will be afraid of a retired Police Sergeant or retired Army Corporal with one.

Why because, retired policemen and soldiers have been implicated all over Nigeria of being arrow heads in inter communal clashes. Sometimes even retired officers have been so accused, including retired Army Generals. If people who had undergone many years of security training and thorough indoctrination still turned around to abuse firearms once they were out of the security forces, what should we expect of civilians? In Zamfara State for example, the banditry problem was aggravated when community vigilantes resorted to ethnic profiling and summary execution of suspects, which invited terrible reprisal attacks.

Some years ago when we were watching a TV report of a school shooting in the US, one friend remarked that Americans are crazy and that we don’t do that in Nigeria. He somehow overlooked the main factor, that our pupils here have no ready access to firearms. How many pupils in Nigeria can enter their father’s bedroom, lift a machine gun from the wall, hide it in a school bag and proceed to spread bullets in the classroom? It is not as if our kids don’t have the same motives, usually bullying by other students. The best they can do however is to fight back with their fists, or to call their elder brothers to join in the fist fight. If many parents have machine guns here, there is no reason to believe that we will not have US-style school shootings.

Why are Nigerian wives and girlfriends not shooting their husbands and boyfriends every day for offences ranging from infidelity to forgetting her birthday? We used to read in James Hadley Chase’s novels that almost every American woman had a .22 or .38 caliber pistol in her handbag. All that our girls have in their handbags here are lipsticks and bleaching creams, which could change by the time Matawalle’s idea comes on stream. Don’t forget, all these Americans acquired firearms either for self defence or for sport. Nobody ever said when he went to acquire a gun that it was for school shooting, for robbing a bank, or to shoot a boyfriend.

In our society which is teeming with unemployed, with so much economic deprivation, a lot of sectarian distrust, much political brigandage and widespread marital and romantic jealousy, bringing firearms ownership into the mix is like igniting the powder keg. That still leaves unanswered the question of what do with terrorists, kidnappers, bandits, armed robbers, ritual murderers and rapists. The bandits’ impunity is especially galling, as the Emir of Katsina pointed out, including raping people’s wives and daughters in their presence. In a religiously conservative society, no outrage is worse than that.

We might say for now that Governor Bello Matawalle’s prescription has too many dangers and should not be official policy. But unless the Nigerian state steps forward and ends or at least drastically curbs insecurity through a combination of more manpower, better training, better equipment, smarter intelligence gathering, higher weaponry, better communication, community involvement and cutting edge technology, down the road millions of Nigerians could acquire firearms, official policy or no. Future generations will then talk about Wild, Wild Zamfara and other places.