Navy Says Nigeria Needs Walls, Not Bases To Checkmate Boko Haram, Bandits

By James Orji

The Nigerian Navy says the only way out of the problem of insecurity facing the country is to build walls across the nation’s borders, to forestall the movement of arms and ammunition into the country.

The assertion was made on Monday by Commodore Jemima Malafa during an interactive session with the House of Representatives Committee on National Security, in Abuja, coming on the heels of trenchant criticism against the federal government’s decision to establish a naval base in landlocked Kano state. The government said the Base will compliment other military actions in the north.

“The base in Kano is intended to be home of the newly created Nigerian Navy Logistics College. For the benefit of doubt and the reading public, the Nigerian Navy is currently involved in various internal security operations beyond its primary maritime security roles. Aside from serving as a training establishment for Nigerian Navy logisticians, the base will also support NN operations in the hinterland,” Suleman Dahun, Navy Spokesman said.

Speaking, Malafa who represented the Navy at the hearing involving other security agencies in the country, said it will be very difficult to check the activity of Boko haram, bandits and other criminals if they continue to have unfettered access to weapons and ammunition.

There are hundreds of unmanned borders across the country which groups such as the ISWAP, Boko Haram and bandits capitalise on to bring weapons into the country.

Two years ago, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the closure of all the nation’s land borders to checkmate the movement of dangerous arms into the country, the action security experts said had barely worked.

For instance, analysts insist that free access to weapons has helped the Islamic extremist group to hold the country on the jugular for more than 11 years, after killing more than 40, 000 people across the North east part of the country.

The terrorist group  still has under their control swathes of lands in the Northern part of the country, where they have already declared an Islamic Caliphate. The federal government denied the insurgents are in control of any territory in the country.

The Nigerian armed forces have neutralized many terrorists in recent times while several hundreds have also surrendered.

But the activities of bandits in the North West have also tried the effort of the government to bring insecurity under total control.

The bandits who kidnap women, school children for ransom have shut down the entire north west region, until recently when the military launched an all-out war.

Watchers of events in the country said it will be impossible to bring the activities of the criminals under total control unless their sources of weapons are blocked.

This suggestion resonates with Malafa’s view that the only way out of this problem is that “we should build a wall between our country and the neighbouring countries.

“I was in Chad recently and discovered that most of the countries that surround us do not have armouries and that is why most of their citizens get arms that they sell to make money. I blame foreign countries that sold and donated arms and ammunition for them without recourse to where they would keep them after use. It is as a result of this that Nigeria is in deep crisis; these arms and ammunition will always find their way to Nigeria.”

Meanwhile, the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN reports that the National Assembly is in the process of passing an act to establish the National Commission against the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons.

The lawmakers are working on a bill for an act to repeal the Explosives Act, and a bill for an act to make provision for the integration of private Close Circuit Television, CCTV into the national security network in Nigeria.

There is also a bill for an act to designate the month of November as the National Appreciation Month for Security Agencies, the news agency said.