ILLEGAL FIREARMS AND NATIONAL SECURITY
There is need for adequate funding of the security agencies in the country, writes Emeka Nwankpa
President Muhammadu Buhari does not really shock Nigerians who call him Baba Gaskiya - one who says it as it is. At a recent virtual security meeting with 36 state governors, he quipped: “These terrorists are in the localities. How is it that they are not short of small arms?’’ That the president asked how illegal firearms enter the country and into unauthorized hands despite the closure of Nigeria’s borders should worry many. The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu has already directed commissioners of police, especially those in Edo and Ondo States to identify, disarm and prosecute persons carrying prohibited firearms, a directive aimed at curbing possible violence ahead of the forthcoming elections in both states.
The borders are porous and compounded by weak surveillance and compromised officials. Ineffective border management is often blamed for the uncontrolled influx of illegal persons, arms and drugs into the country which again raises the need for improved intelligence within the nation’s security community.
Expanding the argument compels a look into how the people form the nucleus of its intelligence-gathering system. Modern societies should learn from our defunct societies where strangers into a settlement were required to present themselves before the local authorities for necessary documentation and integration. Everyone knew his neighbor.
The sophistication of modern systems driven by interagency synergy and cutting-edge technology can create such improvement and the president alluded to this when he said: “I have directed the Service Chiefs to meet among themselves in-between the National Security Council meetings. The services have resources; yes, they need more, and mobility, and are doing their best, but there is a need for better gathering and interpretation of intelligence. Our intelligence-gathering must be improved’’.
In the last few weeks, national security concerns have dominated, and deservingly so, conversations prompting the president’s high- level consultative meetings, physically and virtually, with military, security, intelligence and service chiefs and the national council on security.
It is gratifying that the outcome of the president’s meeting with North- east governors led by Babagana Zulum of Borno State and also with member-governors of the security committee of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) representing each of the six geo-political zones, was a unique pan-Nigerian scrutiny of issues bedeviling national security anchored on a broad-based national outlook against a problem that has become utterly endemic, if not, a pandemic.
Getting critical stakeholders on board therefore, as the president has done, was the most audacious, auspicious and laudable thing to do in the circumstance. The governors’ argument that the bailout will help tackle the specter of insecurity in their respective states is worth considering particularly viewed against claims that unemployment and poverty, compounded by the menace of illegal small and light weapons, are responsible for insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and other forms of criminality in the country. This submission, to put it as lawyers often do, is well-laid.
President Buhari has seized every opportunity to canvass the need for Nigerians to join ranks and curb insecurity in the country, remarking that his war team has achieved much security-wise considering the scary security situation on assuming office in 2015. His worry comes at a time of Al-Qaeda infiltration into the North-west region.
Commander of U.S Special Operations Command in Africa (US AFRICOM), Major Gen. Dagvin Anderson, at a digital briefing on August 4, 2020 with journalists in Africa, warned that Islamist terrorist Al-Qaeda and ISIS were exploiting COVID-19 pandemic to gradually control the West African region after losing ground in Syria, Iraq and the Middle East.
But the alarm had hardly dropped when the Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Major General John Enenche responded swiftly to allay public fears, reassuring Nigerians that the Armed Forces, aware of the infiltration of the terror groups, will adequately protect Nigerians. He described the warning as a tacit approval and international acknowledgement of the ongoing aggressive onslaughts against terrorist groups in the country, pointing out that some foreign terrorists who were arrested in Niger State were valid examples.
The buck stops with the president and as commander-inchief of the armed forces, he knows what many do not know hence his insistence on hunting down Nigeria’s troublers with the current High Command of courageous service chiefs led by the Chief Defence Staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin whose tenacity, tirelessness and unflagging commitment to crushing enemies of peace, stability and security of the Nigerian State are not in doubt.
And there is no stopping the conversations. NGF’s deputy chairman and Sokoto State governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, has lent weight to calls by the CDS for alternative funding of military operations in the country, saying that a special provision should be constitutionally made to increase funding for the Nigerian Army and other security agencies in the country and that the federal government needed no legislative appropriation to fund security.
He spoke in Faskari, Katsina State along with his Zamfara State counterpart, Bello Mutawalle, as special guests at the Nigerian Army Special Army Super Camp 4, near Katsina to assess the progress of Exercise Sahel Sanity, an ongoing operation against banditry, kidnapping and cattle rustling in the North- west region.
"There is need for proper and structured funding of the army and other security agencies in the country to enable them procure superior weapons to that of their adversaries; you need funding. Funding is key to combating insecurity in any country. With more available equipment the Nigerian security agencies will achieve more resounding successes’’, he said.
It could not have been better said. At a time like this when the vexed insecurity issue is still on the front-burner, it could not have been better said.
Ineffective border management is often blamed for the uncontrolled influx of illegal persons, arms and drugs into the country which again raises the need for improved intelligence within the nation’s security community