Activist Urges Legalization of Firearms and Ammunition for Nigerians Amid Rising Insecurity Concerns

Folalumi Alaran in Abuja

A human rights activist and author, Adebayo Raphael, has called for the legalization of firearms and ammunition to enable Nigerians to have access to guns to protect and defend themselves against any violent attack.

He said Nigerians can no longer fold their hands, considering the alarming rate of insecurity in the country.

He condemned the current statistics that only 3 in every 100 people in Nigeria are licensed to own a gun, which emphasizes the extreme social inequality and nauseating bias in the current gun control regime in the country. 

He disclosed this in a statement he made available to the journalists in Abuja at the weekend. 

He said the Firearms Control Act of 1959, which currently dictates the rules of the regulation of civilian gun ownership in Nigeria, merely underscores the Nigerian state’s monopoly on violence and the class privilege ravaging the country. 

The statement noted that from airstrikes to massacres, the Nigerian state and its entire security architecture have so horribly abused the state’s monopoly on justified violence—killing, raping, and secretly burying citizens, including peaceful protesters, in mass graves—that citizens have abandoned all hopes of entrusting their safety to the state. 

He added that the complete legalization and democratization of gun ownership in Nigeria is the only way forward, and it is a matter of necessity.

The statement read in part “ In total, there are officially 6.2 million civilian-owned firearms for the rich and powerful to protect themselves, their properties, and families in Nigeria, a country of over 210 million people with a severe security crisis and brutal surge in acts of expansionist terrorism by Islamist fundamentalists, Fulani herders, etc. 

“ It should surprise no one that there are nearly never cases of the wealthy and their scions being kidnapped, gunned down, or butchered day and night in Nigeria. Compared to the rest of the population considered soft targets by terrorists, the political class and the wealthy in Nigeria are invariably the protected class due to their exclusive privilege to defend themselves and their families from these savage extremists. In these desperate times, the right to bear and keep arms should not merely be a privilege for the moneyed class; it should be a right for every ordinary Nigerian who is of sane mind. Nothing screams upper-class conspiracy and downright callousness more than this. 

“ Between 2013 and now, more than 10,000 Nigerian men have experienced the withering consciousness of impotence as their wives and young daughters were abducted by Islamist terrorists, raped, and later forced to terminate their unplanned pregnancies.

“  The cancerous elite conspiracy in Nigeria is the reason ordinary Nigerian fathers still can not protect their families and properties, and women and girls can not live freely without the fear of being raped or abducted by terrorists. In Mexico, where more than 30,000 people have died yearly since 2018 due to criminal violence and kidnappings, the right of civilians to keep and bear arms is no longer in question. 

“ There are several reports confirming how young boys aged 6 to 15 years old in the state of Guerrero in Mexico are taking up arms to protect themselves and their families from the enforced disappearance, conscription, and unabated violence by drug cartels in the region “ 

Adebayo  said the beliefs of some Nigerians that the country is not ready to legally and liberally arm its citizens in line with global best practices is a sign that there is still a grave disconnect between citizens’ understanding of their obligations in relation to the state and vice-versa in a liberal democracy.