Since Monday, 30th January when 661 pieces of pump-action rifles were intercepted by the Federal Operations Unit, FOU, of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, in Lagos, speculations have been rife on the identity of the masterminds of the importation and the destination of the deadly weapons. The failure of the Customs authorities to parade the suspects in the importation —Oscar Okaforan, Mahmud Haruna and Sadique Mustapha—(accompanying the consignment to its destination) as they are wont to do, which came in through the Lagos ports, has further heightened suspicions that the masterminds might be “highly placed”.
This suspicion is both frightening and saddening as it betrays a growing distrust of the government of the day by the very citizens that cheered it into power barely two years ago. The pertinent question is: “What justifies this distrust?”
The answer lies in the cocktail of deadly silences and inactions of the government of the day on grave matters of state that otherwise require swift and decisive action.
One of the most poignant examples of this culpable passivity is the deafening silence of the Buhari government on the identity of those arming the ubiquitous killer Fulani herdsmen with expensive AK47 rifles with which they have been terrorising Nigerian citizens all over the country. Should the Presidency claim ignorance of the sources of these weapons, then a worrisome question mark is raised on the competence, and perhaps neutrality, of the Nigerian security apparatti, the Directorate of State Security especially. AK 47 rifles are not easily come by by ill-educated Fulani teenage herdsmen.
Die-hard pessimists have been quick to fill the vacuum of information by speculating —without concrete evidence— that the 661 rifles are meant for the killer herdsmen — in Southern Kaduna for instance. That of course is wildly speculative, considering the many other politically volatile states in the federation where thuggery is rife. But it fills the vacuum created by government’s unconscionable silence on who arms the killer herdsmen some of whom the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El Rufai, admitted paying huge sums recently by way of appeasement.
