Whether Nigerians should be given the right to bear firearms or not is an argument that recurs each time there is an uptick in security issues. It is a solution that has been proffered by ex-Generals like Theophilus Danjuma; politicians such as former House of Representatives majority leader Alhassan Ado-Doguwa and Senator Kabir Marafa, during congressional sessions; former Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom; Lagos LP gubernatorial candidate Gbadebo Rhodes-Viviour; leaders at various levels of government, and of course, Nigerians themselves. Even if one disagrees with them, it is not hard to see their point. How many of us, watching videos of bandits pillaging the church in Eruku, Kwara State, did not fantasise heroically barging into the scene and rescuing the worshippers from their assailants? But real life is not a Hollywood action-packed film.
Guns are complicated objects; their ownership changes society in complicated ways that a disorganised country like Nigeria is not fully prepared to manage. There is little to suggest that owning firearms will do much for the communities under constant siege.
Where do we even start from? Will the guns be carried by individuals or kept by community leaders who will coordinate their use? Individuals who are unskilled in firearm use (and even safety practices) cannot efficiently raise weapons against the marauders without harming themselves in the process. You need some coordination. If the community leaders keep the guns until needed, that will still be an inferior arrangement relative to a properly constituted police force. Besides, what of the quality of weaponry? What if you give people dane guns and their assailants come with machine guns? What if they have machine guns and the bandits come with rocket launchers?
None of those who want Nigerians armed to self-defend address whether the individuals would buy the firearms or if the government would be expected to provide them. We cannot expect the poor farmers whose livelihoods have been severely imperiled by the insecurity situation to still set aside funds to buy guns. It is unfair to task those who themselves have not eaten fully to buy a gun and purchase the bullets it will eat. This will be in addition to the burdens people already carry in every aspect of social life where the government has failed. Where the government has failed to provide proper infrastructure of education, health, transport, security, water/energy, etc., Nigerians have picked up the slack. Now they must still procure weapons privately just to live like ordinary humans. Who did we offend that we must pay so much for our Nigerian lives? Even if the government wants to pay for the firearms, we will still face the problems of endemic corruption and administrative ineptitude that could jeopardize the whole proposal. Nigeria’s defense budget is already bloated.
Then there is the reality of poverty. If you provide guns to poor communities that you have not yet offered public amenities, do not be surprised when they use their own hands to pass them to the bandits and take a “peace deal” that will at least guarantee their lives. Gun ownership will also change their community dynamics in ways that we cannot simply contain. The enemy we are supposed to kill with a gun is not always easily defined, and while we are waiting for the marauding herdsmen to approach, we will manufacture new enemies. For a society that does not have gun ranges, gun shows, or communal celebrations of the gun—outlets for dissipating the heady feelings of possessing dangerous weapons—we will soon find ourselves turning against each other. Also, and especially in a country like Nigeria where people are quick with their hands—constantly slapping anyone they deem beneath them across the face—having guns is going to create a problem of aggression. Add to all of these the question of the manufacturing and distribution of firearms. By the time these weapons become freely accessible, we will have created a market that will need the insecurity to continue so that firearms factories can be profitable.
Nigeria has never quite had what you might call a “gun culture,” but we have always had to deal with the problems of gun violence. In the 1970s, the issue of insecurity was a consequence of the Nigerian civil war, which led to the proliferation of weapons and armed robbers. The infamous “Bar Beach Show” that led to the public execution of some robbers was part of the attempt to resolve the gun problem of the period. In the late 1980s to the 1990s, it was the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone that were blamed for the same issues of arms proliferation, insecurity, and armed robbery in Nigeria. Today, we finger the disintegration of Libya in the wake of the Arab Spring for the flooding of Nigeria with weapons now being openly wielded by bandits and terrorists. Nigeria’s internal chaos repeatedly makes the country vulnerable to the mayhem that unfolds in other countries. Yet, in the decades we have had to deal with the issue of insecurity and arms proliferation due to the breakdown in our society or elsewhere, we still have not come up with a solution. The idea of self-defense entices us, but the costs of bearing that burden are far too overwhelming.
It must be said that the reason that the Nigerians pining for that solution are doing so is because they have lost faith in the ability of their government to do right by them. We no longer think the state can organize itself to provide the necessary public infrastructure, and we-the-people are so used to stepping in that we feel even this one too must become our responsibility. The more the government has retracted from its responsibility to the public, the more we have stepped up; and the more we have stepped up, the more we have lost sight of how to maintain the commons for the collective good. While I completely understand the appeal of self-responsibility, we still cannot afford to give up on the possibility of what can be done with public resources when well organized. There is nothing Nigeria needs to do about the current insecurity that a reformed police force cannot adequately address.
We have enough police officers who can adequately secure our communities if they withdraw them from the rich people they have been deployed to guard, as the government has promised, and rightfully deploy them to serve the people. I have previously suggested that the government needs to license private security outfits for the rich people who need to secure themselves and stop using the police for that indulgence. Private security outfits will be far more effective in ensuring security because they can meet the specific needs of those who need it, rather than serving as mere status symbols. The reason these privileged elites abuse the privilege of having police officers detailed to secure them by making them carry handbags or wash cars is that they come too cheaply. If they pay for private security, they will take them more seriously. The rest of us Nigerians should be served by the police who should be deployed to the communities across the country to secure lives. We do not need any more privatized solutions. The resort to privatization is one of the reasons the country is in a sordid mess. With firearms in individual hands as a form of “private security,” Nigeria will bury itself with its own hand.
