Peoples Gazette
Stephen Garba, an indigene of Gwoza community in Borno, lost all his siblings and several relatives during a deadly Boko Haram attack in 2014. His life was spared because he had travelled to a nearby village on the day of the attack.
It’s been seven years since the incident, but life has not remained the same for Mr Garba.
Like millions of others with similar stories since Boko Haram insurgents launched their violent campaign across Nigeria’s North-East, Mr Garba has been surviving in one of several camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri, alongside his four children.
According to data from the UNHCR, over 3.2 million people are displaced, including over 2.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north-eastern Nigeria, and over 684,000 IDPs in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
“Since the attack, I have never bothered to go back to my house”, Mr Garba said, adding that the attack has left him, “living in abject poverty.”
A three-month investigation by Gideon Sarpong and Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi based on interviews with dozens of security experts, gunsmiths, government officials and review of police records has revealed an underground network of gunsmiths, criminal cartels and arms traffickers who exploit the porous borders across West Africa and the Sahel region to traffic in small arms and light weapons (SALWs), which continues to fuel conflicts across the region.
The investigation also showed that unrest in places like northern Nigeria, Côte D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mali has increased the demand for SALWs and significantly weakened the ability of their central governments to control their respective territories and the borders heightening insecurity in the subregion.
SALW production in West Africa
The proliferation of SALWs has played an important role in the operations of non-state armed groups, fueling their attacks in West Africa, particularly northern Nigeria and the Sahel region.
Abdullah Aziz is a 70-year-old gunsmith based in Bimbilla, the capital town of Nanumba North District in Ghana. Although he acknowledges that the manufacture of SALW is prohibited under Ghana’s laws and could face prosecution if he is arrested, it doesn’t deter him from engaging in the trade.
“I got the training from my father, and I have passed it on to my son. We recognise that the production of these guns is illegal but it is all I have known my entire life. We would like the government to regularise it and give us the necessary support,” he said.
Mr Aziz also claims that he doesn’t sell his craft weapons to “criminals and smugglers,” but there is no way he can control where his guns end up and what they might be used for.
The situation is not entirely different in Nigeria. Ibrahim Abdullahi, a blacksmith in Kano, in northern Nigeria, has been a manufacturer of craft weapons for close to two decades. But until recently when he was mandated by law to regularise his operations, he admitted that he was “producing local weapons for everybody.”
“Before the government banned these weapons, I made them for everyone but now, we produce for local vigilantes with permission from the police. They must show us their identity card and police permit else we won’t do it because it is illegal,” Mr Abdulahim said in Hausa.
With craft weapons selling between US$90 to US$150 in West Africa (depending on the type of firearm and level of technicality), the likes of Messrs Abdullah and Ibrahim can boast of a relatively comfortable standard of living. They are among thousands of gunsmiths and traffickers dotted across Ghana and the subregion cashing in on this illicit activity.
A 2020 report by the BBC estimated that gunsmiths in Ghana produced up to 200,000 guns a year. Considering that Ghana has not experienced any major conflict or violence that requires the use of arms on such a large scale, some experts have suggested that these craft weapons end up fueling conflicts in neighbouring countries.
“We know that for as long as the blacksmiths exist and continue to perfect their trade in the various weapons and the ammunition that they manufacture, there is a certainty that some of these arms are involved in the conflicts in the subregion,” said Yaro Kasambata, a security researcher at the University of Professional Studies in Accra.
