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Ahead of the 2027 general elections, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Olatunji Disu, said the Nigeria Police Force has commenced a programme to mop up illegal arms across the country.
The IGP said the operation for the surrender and recovery of weapons would become more intensive as the elections draw closer.
This is just as Disu also called for advocacy on the civil disarmament of people with illegal arms in their possession and urged the public to recognise that security is a collective responsibility.
The IGP made this known when he received a delegation from the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms & Light Weapons (NCCSALW), led by its Director-General, retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG) Johnson Kokumo, at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.
The IGP, while noting the menace of illegal weapons in the hands of criminals, said the time has come to educate the public on the dangers posed by weapons in circulation.
He said: “We need to let them know that it is not only us putting on uniform that are security operatives. Policing is a collective responsibility.
“It is important to create the awareness that anybody carrying illegal arms around is going to use it on another citizen of the country.
“So, there is need for us to carry out civil disarmament and all hands must be on deck to ensure the success of the exercise.
“Our officers have been told to start this, especially as we are approaching the elections, and we have started recovering illegal arms in the possession of people who are not supposed to have them.”
The IGP said the operation for the surrender and recovery of weapons would become more intensive as the elections draw closer.
According to him, the focus of the operation is to develop a programme that will encourage people to surrender illegal arms in their possession.
The IGP, while soliciting partnership with the NCCSALW to jointly execute the programme targeted at the voluntary surrender of illegal arms in unauthorised hands, pledged the commitment of the Nigeria Police Force to continue strengthening collaboration with the NCCSALW in weapon recovery.
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He said the Nigeria Police Force, as the country’s leading internal security agency, with a presence across the nation, has greater access to the public than any other government agency.
He said the contribution of the Nigeria Police Force to arms recovery was enormous in view of the access it has to all kinds of weapons, whether illicit, manufactured or stolen.
“We share this mission of arms recovery together because we cannot continue to have a great number of recovered arms being recirculated back into society.
“Every arm discovered, every arm destroyed will make my job easier. So it’s a joint operation, it’s a joint mission that we have,” he said.
Earlier, in his address, the Director-General of the NCCSALW said he was at the Force Headquarters to identify ways to strengthen institutional collaboration and chart a path for joint action against illicit arms proliferation between the two organisations.
He said it was incontrovertible that the proliferation of illicit arms and ammunition, terrorism, violent extremism and crime were intertwined.
According to him, it is the availability of illicit weapons that encourages violent extremism and all forms of violent crime.
He said: “It is in realisation of this that ECOWAS came together by way of an agreement, crafted a convention to which Nigeria remains a signatory.
“A convention for each member state to create an agency of government, either by way of a commission, department or centre, to fight the proliferation of illicit arms and ammunition in each member state.”
Kokumo, while noting that the centre had destroyed more than 16,000 obsolete, decommissioned and unserviceable weapons since its inception, said the Nigeria Police Force had supplied a total of 11,907 illicit, unserviceable, obsolete and decommissioned weapons to the centre.
He said: “Out of this, given to the centre by the Nigerian Police Force, we have 8,438 automatic weapons and 3,489 locally fabricated weapons.”
