Banditry Reinforcement: Call for self defense, arm possession and the tied hands of State Authorities
The scourge of insecurity has recently put before Nigerians the option of calls for self defense. In the clamour has been the demand for possession of firearms by individuals to protect themselves against terror elements. That the clamour has begun to attract subscription on the part of State government authorities, is pushing the call to a reverberating resonance appealing to the sense of agitation. This has become particular of the North-West which recently has been engulfed with the scourge of banditry.
A statement giving expression to the necessity for citizens to now possess firearms for self defense by the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, on Wednesday, had left mixed reactions in the air. Masari who is the governor of President Muhammadu Buhari’s home State, had while featuring on a BBC Hausa programme in his discussion with journalists in Katsina, called on “whoever wants to protect himself and his family to acquire arms,” assuring them of his government’s support. Lamenting that the number of police operatives in Katsina State was less than 3,000, too insufficient amidst heightening bandits’ rampages, Masari justified his argument stating that security is everybody’s responsibility.
He was quoted: “Security is everybody’s affair, irrespective of political difference. What the public should know is that in Katsina, you don’t have up to 3,000 police(men). Therefore, we are calling on whoever wants to protect himself and his family to acquire arms. The religion of Islam has allowed a person to protect himself and his property and family. If you die in the course of protecting yourself, you die a martyr. The annoying fact is that bandits have access to guns and good people don’t have access to these guns with which they can protect themselves and their families. We will assist those who want to bring in arms because there is need for the people of Katsina to support the security agents. We do not trust the activities of vigilantes because they are leaving their places of origin to other towns. We prefer people defending their places of origin themselves.”
Although Masari’s call had attracted criticisms from some quarters, some of which express fear over the threats of crime and anarchy that such posture would erupt, the call cannot be totally said to be insensible given thought to the plight of helpless citizens who continue to suffer gruesome attacks, while the State Government apparatus which is constitutionally limited on the control of security provisions is left handicapped. To some, decentralising security formations in the Federation to make statutory provision for state police and community policing structures is a better option than mob arming of citizens. With prevailing attacks from bandits recently, more State authorities within the Northern region have begun to introduce to their residents the sense of self defense.
Since it is believed that possession of firearms by individuals would constitute more threats under uncontrollable circumstances, given the character of the socio-cultural attributes of Nigerians which is believed to be liable to tendencies of abuse and misuse, the only antidote to giving-off the option rationally without contest, is the ability of the Government to arrest the situation of the worsening insecurity scourge by grounding the networks of the variant blend of all heightening threats. If the argument of the proliferation of crime would be justified tenable as a good reason to withhold consent to the demand of individual possession of firearms, it only behooves the Federal Government, in whose preserve the control of the security forces dwells, to firmly rise to task to exterminate the scourge of insecurity threats strangling the architecture of peaceful coexistence and cohabitation in the Country.
