Proliferation of firearms being smuggled in from Libya, Yemen, Mali, Niger and Chad and increasing use of illegal drugs are responsible for the worsening crime situation in Nigeria.
The Minister of Interior, Lieutenant General Abdulraman Dambazau (retd), said this on Wednesday when he met the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, Commissioners of Police and other senior officers at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.
Dambazau said the farmers/herders conflicts being witnessed in some parts of the country has no ethnic or religious colouration, stressing that it is a regional problem over sharing of land and water resources.
According to Dambazau, security and agriculture ministers from West and Central African nations will comprehensively address the issues at a conference scheduled to take place soon.
On proliferation of firearms and their sources, the minister said: “Firearms and drugs are drivers to violent crimes.
“They do not cause the crimes that we are witnessing, but they drive them.
“As police officers, we have a role to play.
“Weapons are drivers to criminal violence.
“There are huge numbers of the weapons in circulation and we know the sources.
“Some of these weapons come from Libya because of the instability, Mali, Yemen, Niger, Chad.
“We also know that some of the weapons come from Niger Delta by way of trade by barter involved between oil thieves and militants.
“They exchange oil for weapons.
“We know the sources and we also know that they come through armed merchants through our ports and seaports, but we must do something about them because the weapons give confidence to criminals and they kill without thinking about it.
“They are easily accessible because you can either buy or acquire.”
On the way forward, Dambazau urged the police to enforce the law of firearms and also widen the scope of the law.
He said: “You must enforce the law against illegal possession of firearms and we must also widen our enforcement to include local made weapons that are not classified as firearms.
“We must widen our law to include those ones that are not presently included and as for me, anyone found to be in possession of firearms would be assumed to be a violent criminal.
“He is either armed robber, terrorist, cultist, militant or bandit.”
Speaking on the farmers/ herders conflicts, Dambazau said: “Today, in the front burner of issue of security is rural banditry and herders /farmers conflict.
“These are issues that have a lot of dimensions and for us to deal with the issue of farmers/herders conflict.
“There is need for us to look at it from multidimensional approach.
“Realising that this issue has regional implication, the ECOWAS President and some members, we find it necessary to organise a conference that would involve ministers in charge of internal security and agriculture in the West and Central Africa region.
“We tend to look at the issue as a local problem, but it is not.
“It is rather a national and regional problem.
“It is not a religious problem neither is it an ethnic problem.
“It is problem that has to do with resource sharing, water and land, and we must find a way to deal with it.”
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