A few hours to the end of his
reign as Ogun State helsman, embattled Governor Ibikunle Amosun contacted the
state’s Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, confessing that he had thousands
of arms and millions of ammunition in store at a secret armoury in Government House,
and that he had decided to hand them over to the police.
Mr Amosun’s anointed candidate
for the March 9 governorship election, Adekunle Akinlade of the Allied Peoples
Movement (APM), had been roundly defeated by Dapo Abiodun of the All
Progressives Congress and the governor was now desperate to clear the
Government House of any incriminating material as Mr Abiodun moved in to take
charge.
Shortly after he was contacted,
Commissioner Makama raced to Government House with some of his subordinates. On
arrival, truckloads of arms and ammunition were brought out of a nondescript
amoury inside the Ogun State Government House.
And then begun a short hand-over
proceeding during which the governor surrendered at least four million rounds
of ammunition, 1,000 units of AK47 assault rifles, 1,000 units of bulletproof
vests and an armoured personnel carrier (APC).
At the event, Mr Amosun said he
procured the arms and ammunition to check the widespread insecurity in his
state of 3,751,140 residents, according to the 2006 census. He said he decided
to keep them at the Government House Armoury to ensure they were not allocated
indiscriminately by security agencies.
The speech making over, the arms
and ammunition were driven to the police command headquarters in the Elewe-Eran
area of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
Four weeks after the event, top
Nigerian security operatives remained alarmed that a civilian governor would
create an armoury and store thousands of arms there. The agents are also
wondering why Mr Amosun has not been arrested and prosecuted for violating
sections of the Nigeria Firearms Act.
The law forbids individuals and
civilian institutions from illegally operating armouries or possessing
prohibited firearms, including artillery, apparatus for the discharge of any
explosive or gas diffusing projectile, rocket weapons, bombs and grenades,
machine-guns and machine-pistols, military rifles (namely those of calibres
7.62 mm, 9 mm, .300 inches and .303 inches), revolvers and pistols whether
rifled or unrifled (including flint-lock pistols and cap pistols).
It remains unclear how Mr Amosun
obtained the weapons. Authorities are wondering how he imported the weapons,
and how he transported them to Government House and stored them for prolonged
periods without being detected.
Some security experts say they
are suspicious he might have acquired far more weapons than he gave up to the
police and that some of them might be in wrong hands already.
The former governor, now senator,
declined to give his own side of the story. He did not answer or return
telephone calls made to him over five days. He also did not respond to text and
WhatsApp messages sent to him.
When contacted, his media
adviser, Rotimi Durojaiye, requested this reporter to email him the questions
meant for Mr Amosun. Five days later, Mr Durojaiye is yet to respond with
answers.
‘Absolutely troubling,
illegal’
Authorities at Nigeria’s key
security agencies revealed that Mr Amosun may have procured the arms and
ammunition without securing End-User certificates from the office of the
National Security Adviser (NSA). End-User certificates are absolutely required
to import controlled products into Nigeria.
A guideline by the NSA office
stipulates that End-User Certificate requests for arms and ammunition must be
made by approved security agencies on behalf of themselves or their qualified
vendors. Neither Mr Amosun nor his state
is an approved security agency or qualified security equipment vendor.
“In line with international best
practices EUCs for arms and ammunition are to be obtained before the shipment
of the items from the originating country. These conditions equally apply for
parts and accessories of all military armaments and hardware,” the guideline
states.
A spokesperson for the Office of
the NSA, the only government institution responsible for issuing end-user
certificates, did not return requests for comments. But multiple sources within
the agency that Mr Amosun or his state could not have been granted certificates
to procure and store arms.
Also, the Nigeria Customs Service
said Mr Amosun did not clear the deadly equipment through Nigerian ports, and
that no one without an end-user certificate could be allowed to bring
controlled items into Nigeria.
“Only the Office of the National
Security Adviser can issue end-user certificate for importation of arms, and
any person or organisation without the document cannot import weapons into
Nigeria,” the spokesperson for the Nigeria Customs Service, Joseph Attah said,
“I repeat: weapons can never be imported into Nigeria without end-user
certificates.”
Mr Attah said even security
agencies, including the police, military and Customs, are required to secure
end-user certificates before embarking on arms purchase.
The Customs regularly intercepts
attempts to import illegal arms into the country, but the owners often
disappear as soon as such illicit shipments are discovered. Yet, security
analysts believe that for every container intercepted by Customs, dozens would
slip through the ports due to Nigeria’s porous security measure.
Illegal possession of arms is a
criminal offence under several Nigerian statutes, including the Robbery and
Firearms (Special Provisions) Act (1984) and the Firearms Act (1990).
In May, three Nigerians were
sentenced to a combined 120 years in prison, including 20 years each for
illegal possession of firearms. The Oyo State High Court relied on the Robbery
and Firearms (Special Provisions) Act to convict the trio.
Bolstering suspicion
Arms proliferation has long been
a big driver of election-related bloodshed in Nigeria, with hundreds of deaths
reported across the country in the 2019 elections alone.
In Mr Amosun’s Ogun State, a number
of residents died in widespread shootings between February 23 and March 9, the
days of the presidential and governorship elections, respectively.
Most of the election-related
deaths, including of police officers, were reported in Ilaro, Abeokuta and Ijebu-Ode,
three of the state’s largest cities. Security sources blamed the killings on
arms proliferation across the state, a menace they said had been largely
difficult to contain.
Security analysts and civic
groups contend that politicians are the major suppliers of deadly weapons into
the streets because of their desperation for victory — which they often find
impossible to recover post election.
Aside election violence, arms
proliferation has also been linked to the growing spate of kidnapping, banditry
and herdsmen violence — claiming tens of thousands of civilian deaths within
the last four years alone.
Mr Amosun also recognised the
danger of arms proliferation in the early days of his administration. Less than
four months after he assumed office as governor in September 2011, he raised a
judicial panel to probe the proliferation of arms in Ogun.
He blamed his predecessor, Gbenga
Daniel, for fostering an atmosphere of gun violence for political benefits, and
imposed a moratorium on gun ownership in the state.
Amosun, police in conspiracy
of silence
PremiumTimes’ reports that
efforts to get Mr Amosun’s comments were rebuffed by the politician. Several
text messages, WhatsApp messages and telephone calls to his two active
telephone lines went unacknowledged or returned over five days.
Mr Amosun’s spokesperson, Rotimi
Durojaiye, also took questions on behalf of his principal, but said he could
not respond to them because he was unable to reach his principal after several
attempts. Mr Durojaiye served as Mr Amosun’s special adviser on media and
publicity when he was governor.
The police also declined to give
comments. Force spokesperson, Frank Mba, directed all enquiries about police
involvement in the matter to Commissioner Makama.
PremiumTimes reports that when
they sent a set of five questions to Mr Makama, he declined to respond. This
was despite his initial promises that he would respond to the enquiries once he
received the questions, which were sent to his telephone line and also through
the state police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi.
Some of the clarifications sought
from Mr Makama included whether he asked Mr Amosun the source of the weapons
before or after he accepted them, whether it was appropriate for a civilian
governor to stockpile a massive cache of weapons and why he was yet to escalate
the matter to Force Headquarters nearly a month later.
There was consensus amongst
several police chiefs who revealed that Mr Makama should have at least invited
Mr Amosun for questioning after receiving the arms and ammunition from him. Mr
Amosun lost immunity from arrest and prosecution on May 29 when his tenure
ended.
Two police sources said the
commissioner had been making frantic moves to quickly inform Force Headquarters
ahead of this story’s publication.
“He is afraid he would be in
trouble if the headquarters learnt about the matter in the media,” a police
source said Sunday evening.
Even though there were initial
claims that the State Security Service’s state director, David Tuksa, was also
present when Mr Amosun handed in the weapons, the agency’s spokesperson
completely distanced the Service’s officials from the matter.
“Our state director was not there
and the SSS did not take any part in the matter,” spokesperson, Peter Afunanya
said.
Minimising a carnage
Top national security officials
believe the quantity of weapons Mr Amosun held was large enough to destabilise
a country.
“You can overrun a country with
that quantity,” a top security official said. “Imagine given 1,000 thugs AK47
rifles — what is the size of the Gambian Army for instance?”
The official, who had served two
national security advisers, said there were legal options Mr Amosun would have
pursued if the arms were primarily imported as donation to the police.
“When Tunde Fashola bought
weapons for the police during his tenure as governor in Lagos, he obtained an
End-User certificate, and the weapons were delivered to the police and not to
his official residence,” the official said, adding that he was amongst those
who worked on the matter at the time.
Multiple security sources revealed
that the SSS became aware of the arms in the Ogun Government House Armoury just
as the 2019 elections were about to begin.
“We immediately placed him and
his surroundings under a heavy security watch,” an SSS agent who had knowledge
of the operation said. “We knew he had enough arms to make the state a field of
dead bodies during the election if he wished.”
Another senior law enforcement
official said he was convinced Mr Amosun handed over the weapons because it
became too late for him to relocate them and he knew the incoming governor
would not give him a cover.
“It was too late for him to
organise an efficient logistics for the relocation of the remaining weapons,”
the official said. “He also did not expect the incoming governor, Dapo Abiodun,
to continue keeping the arms in Government House as a cover-up.”
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