B’Haram: Need to deal with arms proliferation

In this piece, JOHN ALECHENU takes a look at the clamour for stronger political will to confront the challenge of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons amid Nigeria’s growing security challenges

President Goodluck Jonathan alongside his colleagues from the Republic of Benin, Cameroon and Chad with representatives from the United States and Britain attended a security summit hosted by the French President, François Hollande, in Paris in May. The summit, which was held at the instance of Jonathan, was aimed at galvanising a multi-national strategy to combat Boko Haram, among other things. This initiative came on the heels of the kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls from Government Secondary School Chibok, Borno State, which provoked international outrage.

Several high-level follow-up meetings have been held since then. However, a recurring decimal in such gatherings is the need for the sharing of intelligence about the movement of insurgents as well as the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The African continent in general and the West African sub-region in particular, has over the years borne the brunt of the proliferation of such arms and weapons. Small arms and light weapons are portable arms that are designed for personal use, and which can be operated by one person, like pistols, revolvers and rifles such as AK47.

Certain categories of explosives also fall within this category provided such weapons are capable of being used and operated by a single individual. Light weapons on the other hand, are also portable weapons but are designed to be handled by two or more persons working as a team, for example, light artillery batteries and certain categories of anti-aircraft guns, provided they are capable of being operated by more than two individuals working or operating as a team.

Long before the Boko Haram menace gained notoriety, the Economic Community of West African States had taken a common position with the rest of Africa on the proliferation, circulation and illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. Member states committed themselves to setting up internal mechanisms to among other things, prevent and combat the excessive and destabilising accumulation of small arms and light weapons within the sub-region.

As signatory to the agreement, Jonathan inaugurated the Ambassador Emmanuel Imohe-led Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons, on April 23, 2013. This, many argued, was against the backdrop of the ignoble role that easy access to small arms and light weapons play in propelling insecurity in Nigeria and elsewhere in the West African sub-region. While speaking on the significance of the President’s action, Imohe said in a recent interview, “The reality today is that the deployment of these weapons is strengthening non-state actors and reinforcing criminal syndicates in several countries. Terrorism, insurgency and other forms of violent criminality will not be what they are, if weapons were not readily available to their perpetrators.

“The affected countries and the international community have been agonising about the security problems this situation poses and as part of this concern, the Authority of the Heads of State and Governments of ECOWAS, endorsed the Moratorium on Small Arms and Light Weapons proliferation and misuse in the sub-region on 31st October, 1998 in Abuja.”

This moratorium became a convention in 2006 and came into force in 2009. The convention mandates member states that are signatories to establish their institutional frameworks for the implementation of convention. Nigeria, in essence, has acted in compliance with this requirement because it established a national committee since the convention came into force.

The present presidential committee came into being as a result of the reconstitution of the previous committee. The current committee draws its membership from various backgrounds – military, security, intelligence, law enforcement, diplomacy, civil service and civil society. This underscores the multi-sector approach which the current administration seeks to bring to bear on tackling the problems of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in Nigeria.

Part of the committee’s mandate includes Nigeria’s facilitation of the implementation of subsisting international instruments and protocols on Small Arms and Light Weapons control to which the country is a signatory. These instruments include ECOWAS Convention, the UN programme of Action on SALWAS, the UN Arms and Trade Treaty.

As part of its mandate, the committee is also saddled with the responsibility of combating the proliferation of such weapons in collaboration with relevant security agencies. It is also to evolve policy options in consultation with other stakeholders – aimed at eradicating the supply of illicit weapons, as well as enhance accountability by agencies of government authorised to carry weapons. The mandate also involves the domestication and implementation of international and regional instruments on the regulation of such. It also involved bringing Nigerian laws against proliferation of illicit weapons using international best practices as well as enhancing regional cooperation, alliances and intelligence sharing on the subject matter.

Just like the war on drugs, most African nations are not short on government rhetoric in favour of eradicating illicit weapons. Trafficking in such weapons has developed exponentially much more than the practical measures that will actually impact on the trade. It is of utmost importance that African governments translate these policies into action and commit the necessary resources to guarantee their implementation.

Apart from criminal gangs whose sophisticated syndicates have made illegal arms trade difficult to trace, it is also vital that governments often referred to as state actors are made to submit themselves to the globally accepted practice of accountability in the use of legally traded guns. There should be an agreeable code of conduct on arms transfers to help ensure that legally traded weapons do not fall into the hands of those who abuse human rights and threaten peace and stability.

This is even more so when non-state actors such as the extremist Islamic sect Boko Haram has become a threat not only to the West African sub-region but the entire Sahel. Before now, arms manufacturing nations were eager to sell weapons to anyone who would buy them, and as a result, dictators who superintended over abusive regimes simply went into the international market and bought weapons with which they tormented their citizens. It may be recalled that Nigeria reported the seizure of a shipment of arms from Iran to the United Nations Security Council in November 2010. A combined team of Nigerian security officials discovered the weapons, including rocket launchers and grenades, in containers labelled as building materials at the Lagos Port. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Odein Ajumogobia (SAN), had at the time said: “Following preliminary investigations, our permanent mission in New York has reported the seizure and inspection of the arms shipment from Iran.”

His Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, who visited Nigeria as part of his government’s effort to clear itself explained that, “A private company which had sold conventional defence weapons to another country in West Africa had transferred the shipment via Nigeria which raised some doubts with relevant officials.”

He said an Iranian representative of the company in Nigeria “had offered explanations and I believe the misunderstanding has been cleared up.”

The France-based shipping company, CMA CGM, which transported the shipment, said it was hidden in containers labelled as building materials and attempts were made to send it to Gambia before Nigerian officials seized it. It took three years for a Lagos High Court to convict and sentence an Iranian, Azim Aghajani, and his Nigerian accomplice, Ali Abbas Jega, after they were implicated in connection with the 2010 discovery of 13 containers of weapons.

The Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nnenna Elendu-Ukeje, has been championing the case for the establishment of a National Commission against the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Nigeria. She argued that such a commission, when set up, would coordinate and implement activities to combat the problem. The lawmaker said Nigeria remains the only ECOWAS member country without the commission even though it is a signatory to the ECOWAS convention on small arms and light weapons, which recommended its establishment in order to track the spread of illegal weapons among citizens.

According to her, research has shown that out of the 857 million small arms and weapons in the world, 500 million are illegal with 100 million found in sub Saharan Africa, adding that 7.5 per cent of them are in Nigeria.

The lawmaker argued that the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta, Boko Haram in the north and sundry violence across the country was due to the uncontrolled number of weapons in private hands.

She noted that Nigeria being the most populous country in West Africa ought to be the first to domesticate the ECOWAS convention towards achieving this objective. It remains to be seen if Nigeria will muster the political will to honour the convention.