Another misstep by the Buhari administration.
What could be the objective of this move? Targeted at cubing gun violence in Nigeria? Didn’t the President’s advisers do any study before their recommendation? I am sure Nigerians will like to know the crime statistics that informed such a decision. Meanwhile let’s have a look at the issues.
My judgement of gun ownership distribution in this country is that it is divided into five main groups.
- Retired decent old men mostly in their sixties and seventies. Members of this group usually have one firearm (sometimes double barrel) and a few (or a little more than a few) bullets. They never go out with their firearms even though they almost always have gun license, use them for protection of self and family from local criminals, mostly at night. Some of them never have to use their firearms for years.
- Mostly middle-aged men, active and successful and naturally targets of criminals. Their usage of their firearms is similar to that of category one. They may or may not have gun license but hardly get involved in gun violence.
- Mostly young men, criminals who have no need for license. Always involved in gun violence since it is their trade.
- Herdsmen, farmers and militia usually engaged in resource control clashes. It’s hard to imagine that they have gun license.
- More recently criminal gangs in some parts of the north and not so recently, Boko Haram members. They obviously have no need for gun license.
The gun license move by government will affect only members of categories 1 & 2. The net effect is that innocent self-protective citizens will become unduly exposed thereby encouraging more gun violence against them because everyone knows that the NPF lacks capacity to offer ordinary citizens adequate protection especially at night when they are retired for the day. How does that benefit anyone?
Is it believable that government does not know this? Or is it a deliberate move to punish some law-abiding citizens? What will government benefit from such punishment? I believe the move is well intended (because I have no evidence to the contrary) but considering the fact that majority of the members of categories 1 & 2 are mostly from one section of the country, it could easily be construed as sectional. Or maybe this is just one of those numerous shadow-chasing moves we make in Nigeria when the solution is elsewhere.
I believe that most of the gun violence in Nigeria involve members of categories 3 to 5. It makes sense to concentrate on these groups. What to do?
- Strengthen the NPF to be able to provide adequate security for all so that innocent citizens have less need to possess firearms for self-protection.
- Effectively man our borders so that illegal firearms inflow is drastically reduced.
- Ensure that all those caught importing firearms illegally never escape justice.
- Ensure that all those caught engaged in illegal local manufacture of firearms never escape justice.
Better review.