Opinion: Why Nigerians Should Not Take Up Arms In Self-Defence Despite Killings
It’s been eight months of rampant killing and kidnapping in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. From banditry in the country’s Northwest, herders-farmers clash in the middle belt, separatist agitation in the Southeast, and kidnapping in the Southwest – where the President, elected in a contentious election last year, hails from – insecurity has engulfed Nigeria.
Citizens, faced with security challenges, most often turn to social media for help, in what has become a new way of seeking fast responses from not just the government, but security personnel. It was in one of such outcries that I found Victor Itse, whose cousin, Luka Itse, was murdered in one of the most heart-wrenching circumstances.
I listened keenly as he shared the story of how Luka was murdered in front of his eight-year-old daughter on December 30, 2023, in Durbi, East of Jos Plateau State, just a day after the extended family held a reunion to plan for the coming year.
Itse had grabbed the herder who had entered his house from behind in a futile attempt to overcome the armed intruder. But the intruder’s shout alerted others and they came to rescue their own.
“They shot Itse three times in the back as he held the ‘Fulani herder.”
But they weren’t done. Itse’s father, who was lying sick on the floor, wasn’t spared. After they realised that the bullet they shot Itse penetrated and killed one of their own, whom he was wrestling to overpower, they turned and shot his 90-year-old father, first in the leg, and then on the forehead.
“He was 90 and sick,” he said to emphasise that the killing was utterly unjustified.
In all these, Itse’s eight-year-old daughter watched in absolute silence and for four days, she remained silent, unable to utter a word despite persuasion from older people.
Itse is survived by a wife and four kids, one of whom Victor said is barely two years.
At that moment, I wondered, would Itse still be alive if he had a gun to defend himself?
“I mean I am a Christian, but we need to defend ourselves,” Victor would repeat after narrating how he escaped death in 2012 during a similar attack.
Just less than two weeks ago before Durbi attack, on Christmas Eve, gunmen killed 195 people and destroyed over 1,290 houses in Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi, Plateau State.
Understandably, the recent carnage in Nigeria has resurrected the debate of gun ownership only as a weapon of ‘self-defence.’
To conceptualise the meltdown of security in the country, one would have to turn to reported cases of violence. Between June 2023 and December 2023, there were 4700 attacks, resulting in the death of 5890 Nigerians, according to data from Beacon Consulting, a security management and intelligence consulting company based in Abuja. Since the country returned to democracy in 1960, and since the uprising of the Islamic jihadist Boko Haram in 2009, Nigerians have grappled with security challenges. But Bola Tinubu, during his inaugural speech in May of last year, assured citizens that security would be his administration’s “top priority” because “neither prosperity nor justice can prevail amidst insecurity and violence.”
“To effectively tackle this menace, we shall reform both our security doctrine and its architecture. We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in numbers. We shall provide better training, equipment, pay, and firepower,” he said on May 29, 2023.
Although Nigeria’s defence budget has nearly tripled since 2019, Nigerians do not feel safer. Many who took the president’s words to heart are disappointed, some dead, despite the defence and the police taking 12 percent, the biggest, in the 2024 budget.
The increasing outcry for citizens to bear arms to defend themselves is regaining more attention in the country’s National Assembly. This is perhaps because the nation’s capital and the seat of power, Abuja, where the President, and the lawmakers reside, has not been spared.
For instance, on January 2, 2024, kidnappers abducted one Mansoor Al-Kadriyar and his six daughters; aged from their early teens to 23. A crowdfunding effort, backed by a former Minister, failed, resulting in the killing of one of the girls by the abductors. A month earlier, the capital territory recorded 66 kidnapped victims in 24 security incidents, which resulted in the death of at least five people.
Ned Nwoko, senator representing Delta North senatorial district, who is also in the Senate committee on police matters, is proposing a bill for Nigerians to carry arms to defend themselves.
“My bill is predicated on the lawlessness that is currently pervading the nation. We have come to a point in this nation where we have to make an honest admission to ourselves which is that the security agents cannot really protect lives and properties as stated in the constitution. The common man is left to his fate. He does not get any kind of support from the police and the police force is unequipped, ill-funded, not capable of discharging those onerous duties and that is the fact,” Ned said during a recent interview.
Ned is not the only politician who had suggested arm bearing. In 2023, Zamfara State government, ridden with attacks by terrorists and bandits, advised residents to obtain firearms. But, is allowing citizens to bear arms a lasting solution to end insecurity in the country?
First, despite strict laws on firearms bearing, there is no shortage of illicit arms in the country. In fact, Nigeria’s firearm market is a thriving one, with an estimated 6.2 million arms in the hands of individuals according to the Small Arms Survey. While the number of illegal arms in Nigeria might not be exactly known as there are different estimates, the common consensus is that the illegal arms are in the hands of criminals.
It however begs the question that if Nigeria cannot regulate or entirely stop arms proliferation across its borders, despite strong prohibiting laws – and at the moment cannot accurately estimate how many illegal arms are in circulation – how can a liberalised arms law make the country safer?
The move to carry arms, in my view, would be a catalyst to the total collapse of whatever remains of Nigeria’s security.
A friend of mine, a moderate-ranking personnel in the Nigerian police force, who pleaded for anonymity said that allowing citizens to bear arms will increase not reduce “insecurity in the society.”
“I know the kind of crimes that are being submitted to our office on a daily basis,” he said. “Now if the country gives approval for the members of the public to bear arms, it will not only be dangerous to us but this country called Nigeria will be very hot for everyone.”
To understand how ‘hot’ the country would be is to take the US as a case study.
Between 2014 and 2022, the US, with one of the world’s most sophisticated military and policing architecture, has witnessed 330,000 shootings. Mass shootings, which often make news headlines, are not the most ‘devastating’ gun-related incidents in America’s gun violence epidemic. Mass shooting, defined as a gun incident with four or more victims – killed or injured – account for only one percent of the total shooting in the nine years reviewed.
What type of gun incidents are killing Americans? Suicide by gun!
In 2023, there were 656 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. These mass shootings have led to 597 deaths and 2,380 injuries. However, suicide by gun claimed the life of 22,506, an average of 66 deaths by suicide per day. Far more frequent than mass shootings is gun homicide and assault. With 36 mass shootings and four deaths in 2024, gun homicide has killed 1383 Americans.
What makes Ned, and other proponents of arming citizens with guns, think that, given the peculiarity of Nigeria’s situation, where many are already angry for government failure in providing basic amenities, that Nigerians will not engage in gun battle with one another at the faintest provocation?
If strict firearms laws in the country have not effectively prevented circulation of illegal guns, how certain are we that Nigeria’s security system has the bandwidth to regulate a ‘relaxed’ gun law?
Aside from the potential rise in “opportunity criminals” who’ll rob people at gunpoint whenever they are short of cash, won’t suicide by gun spike? With Nigeria having one of the highest suicide rates in Africa, won’t increased gun ownership result in more suicides by gun, given that many Nigerians are experiencing frustration as a result of soaring inflation, food scarcity, and lack of jobs? Won’t slight political arguments at beer parlours, football viewing centres, or husband-wife arguments result in gun confrontations? Between January and June 2023, over 47 women died at the hands of their husbands. With more guns in the hands of civilians, this number could increase exponentially.
In a country where 88.4 million of its citizens are living under extreme poverty, arming them for self-defence, borrowing the words of Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, the country’s Chief of Army Staff, will result in nothing but anarchy.
