Barely one week after the Nigeria Customs Service intercepted a container loaded with firearms and ammunition at the Tin Can port in Lagos, the police have said they recovered no less than 1,889 weapons and 52,577 rounds of live ammunition between January and December, 2021.

The spokesperson for the Nigeria Police Force, CP Frank Mba, told our correspondent in an interview on Thursday that the recovered weapons include 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.

Mba noted that some of the arms in circulation were produced in illegal arms manufacturing factories operating in the country, noting however that the police would continue to bring the perpetrators to book.

There have been public disquiet and deep concerns over the influx and proliferation of firearms across the country, which has been attributed to the country’s porous borders and corruption by the agencies at the borders. The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), said only God could “effectively supervise” Nigeria’s 1,400km border with Niger Republic.

The arms proliferation is said to be fuelling the raging insecurity, including the banditry in the North-West, Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East and kidnapping and killings in other parts of the country.

On December 18, it was reported that that no fewer than 849 persons were killed by bandits within the past five months in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto and Katsina states.

The President had on different occasions attributed the influx of arms into the country to the crisis in Libya and activities of the close associates of Libya’s former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed in 2011.

In March, the President also lamented that despite the closure of land borders in 2019, arms and ammunition continued to flow illegally and that as long as Libya remains unstable, the problem would remain.

Meanwhile, Mba said, “The proliferation is of major concern to the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force and even our counterparts in the law enforcement community. To underscore the importance FG attaches to this issue, there is a special committee working on how to tackle the proliferation of such weapons.

“Between January and now, not less than 1,887 firearms, mostly of the Kalashinov family, General Purpose Machine Guns, Rocket-Propelled Grenade and locally-fabricated weapons were recovered by the police. Also, 52,577 rounds of live ammunition were recovered.

“On our part, we have adopted a multifaceted approach in dealing with this problem. We do auditing of the arms with those who are licensed to ensure nobody is parading a licence that is illegally obtained or parading a weapon and claiming to have a licence that does not exist.

“We understand that a certain quantity of the illegal arms in circulation are products of illegal arms manufacturing factories in the country. To the best of my knowledge, we have only one legitimate arms manufacturer in Nigeria, which is Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria.

“Any other person claiming to be manufacturing weapons in Nigeria is doing so illegally. We carry out intelligence-driven and target-oriented raids on places where we suspect that arms are being illegally manufactured. In the last one year, we have been able to burst a lot of these illicit arms manufacturing factories, particularly in Plateau and other parts of the country.”

He said the police also carry out raids on criminal hideouts to arrest the criminals and recover their weapons, thereby reducing the illegal arms in circulation and weakening the firepower of the criminal elements.

“We have been able to identify, crack and dismantle a lot of international smuggling syndicates by working with Interpol and colleagues in neighbouring countries,” he added.

The President, while speaking in September at the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, United States, called for the regulation of arms and light weapons trade in the interest of human rights.

A statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, quoted him as saying, “Nigeria remains deeply concerned about the illicit trade, transfer, and circulation of small arms and light weapons. Their excessive accumulation and uncontrolled spread in many regions of the world are having devastating humanitarian and socio-economic consequences, especially on the continent of Africa.

“It is on this note that my delegation calls for the worldwide application of the Arms Trade Treaty to codify accountability in the conventional arms trade, which is critical to the security of nations. This is in recognition of the need for a broad-based global partnership in the ongoing battle against trans-border crimes, including terrorism and piracy.”