[lit-ideas] Re: Guns and the older woman, continued

Lawrence, where do you get your information? Guns may or may not be allowed in Nigeria, but the country is an armed camp. Nigeria is another instance of lots of young men with nothing to do, all armed to the teeth with the very latest weapon technology. The big thing in Nigeria is kidnapping oil workers for ransom. 

www.irinnews.org

The widespread availability of small arms and light weapons has helped
stoke a decade of unrest in the region that produces nearly all of
Nigeria?s oil, which is rife with hostage-taking, attacks on oil
installations and fighting among rival militias.

Attacks on oil installations and hostage-takings staged in the Niger
Delta since January by a previously unknown Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have halved the Nigerian
output of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell and cut 20 percent of the
country?s daily exports of 2.5 million barrels. It has helped sustain
the pressure on world oil prices, now at new historical highs of US$70
a barrel.

MEND claims to be fighting for the interests of the impoverished
inhabitants of the oil region, who want a greater share of the oil
revenues forming the mainstay of Nigeria?s economy. However, its
demands include the release of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, leader of the
Niger Delta People?s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) who was arrested by the
authorities in September 2005 and is now facing charges of treason.

Security experts in Nigeria concede that MEND has grown out of the
same system of militia forces the restive delta has spawned over the
years, all dependent on an international criminal network trading in
illegal arms and crude oil stolen from pipelines in the swamps and
creeks of the region. ?It is the same groups of fighters who had
attacked for ransom in the past and tapped oil from pipelines,? said a
senior Nigerian security official with briefs in the oil industry.
?But now there is an attempt to build a political cause.?

According to a 2003 international consultancy study financed by Royal
Dutch Shell, which runs the biggest operation of any of the
transnational oil companies in Nigeria, violence in the delta claimed
an average of 1,000 lives each year. The study predicted that Shell
might be forced to end onshore oil production in Nigeria by 2008
unless the issues underlying the region?s violence were addressed. It
is possible that the recent attacks and kidnappings targeting mainly
Shell operations have even further hastened the process. Shell has
been forced to close down its entire onshore operations in the western
Niger Delta, shutting down the Forcados oil export terminal, one of
its two main export terminals in Nigeria.

According to Babafemi Ojudu, a researcher who has investigated the
small-arms trade in the country, the Niger Delta has long had easy
access to small weapons, but growing violence and militarisation in
the region has been a boost to the trade in recent years. He said
smugglers operating out of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroon and
Nigeria have always coordinated the trade. ?Using fast boats, these
smugglers cruise to ships in the high seas and obtain guns, the
origins of which may be as far afield as Eastern Europe and Asia,?
said Ojudu.

Ijaw militants loyal to Dokubo Asari display their guns and magic
charms in Okoronta village in the Niger Delta in July 2004.
Credit: George Osodi/IRIN
Dokubo-Asari told IRIN in 2005 that Nigeria?s Atlantic waters were
indeed the main channel through which his militia obtained weapons.
?We are very close to international waters, and it's very easy to get
weapons from ships,? he said in the interview. ?We have AK-47s,
general-purpose machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.?

Government and oil-industry officials say groups like Dokubo's NDPVF
and MEND, which have popped up in the region in recent years, fund
their weapons purchases by tapping crude oil from pipelines into
barges for illegal sale to tankers waiting offshore. Nigeria was
estimated at one time to be losing as much as 10 percent of its daily
oil exports through such thefts, which are locally known as bunkering.

While the Niger Delta may be Nigeria?s biggest small-arms problem, it
is not the only one. Nationwide, the illegal circulation of small
arms, sent in by smugglers across the land borders of the neighbouring
countries of Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, has had an impact not
only on widespread armed banditry but also on ethnic and religious
violence that have claimed more than 10,000 lives since 1999.

Another key arms-smuggling route into Nigeria is the Lagos-Benin
coastal axis extending across West Africa as far as Liberia and Sierra
Leone. In November 2003, customs officials intercepted a lorry
carrying 170,000 rounds of ammunition concealed in a cargo of charcoal
that had crossed the border from Benin into Nigeria. It was pronounced
one of the biggest hauls ever in Nigeria.

An equally worrisome source of weapons is Nigeria?s northern borders
with Chad and Niger. Nigerian security agencies say remnants of rebel
wars in both countries have drifted southwards with their weapons into
Nigeria over the past decade. Operating in large bands of 30 to 50
armed men, they engage in banditry on highways in northeast and
central Nigeria. ?They are even hired as mercenaries to fight in land
disputes or in communal or religious conflicts in the area,? said a
Nigerian army intelligence official.

Many experts say Nigeria?s problems with small arms and light weapons
date back to the country?s 1967-1970 civil war, during which the
southeast made a failed attempt to secede.

?Many of the small arms used in that war, especially on the rebel
Biafran side, weren?t mopped up at the end of hostilities,? said
Patrick Oraeke, a security consultant. He said the war created a
generation of people who had trained in the use of weapons but were
not under the discipline and control of any of the armed forces. As a
result, they easily resorted to banditry. ?The surge in armed
robberies and violent crimes in Nigeria that followed the civil war is
yet to abate,? he added.

There is evidence, too, that arms flowed into Nigeria as a result of
the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where Nigerian soldiers
were involved in peacekeeping missions. Both smugglers and soldiers
brought in weapons from those conflicts. In one known case, a soldier
testifying as a prosecution witness in one of several
political-assassination cases recorded under the late military ruler
General Sani Abacha, told a court he was given an AK-47 rifle brought
in from Liberia by his superiors to use in the assassination attempt
on a perceived opponent of Abacha. The would-be assassins had reasoned
that the weapon would be harder to trace since it was not registered
in the official armoury, said prosecution witness Sgt Barnabas Mshelia.

Three years after leaders of the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) declared a moratorium on the manufacture, import and
export of small arms in 1998, Nigeria set up a special committee with
members drawn from the armed forces and security agencies to
coordinate efforts to mop up small arms and light weapons in the
country. More than 8,000 small arms recovered following the ECOWAS
moratorium were destroyed in July 2001. Equally large numbers have
subsequently been reclaimed, with two militia groups in the Niger
Delta surrendering more than 3,500 guns in 2004.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 17 September
2005, President Olusegan Obasanjo stressed the need for ?a legally
binding international instrument that will regulate, control and
monitor the illicit trade in small arms, including their transfer to
non-state actors.? He said the agreement reached in June 2005 by the
UN on the identification and tracing of illicit weapons would only
serve as a temporary measure.

?The availability and wide circulation of small arms and light weapons
pose the greatest danger to peace and security, especially in our
region,? Obasanjo said. ?These weapons have helped to prolong
conflicts, undermined stability, social peace and security and have
wrought devastation on the economies of affected states.?

Robert Paul
Reed College




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