The Federal Government yesterday authorized The Federal Civil Defense Corps to bear arms.
This is rather disturbing given the palpable threats already posed by small and large arms proliferation in Nigeria and when the country is at the verge of losing the war against curbing the menace of extrajudicial killings dubbed "accidental discharge" by operatives of the Nigerian Police Force.
Apart from wondering what a Civil Defense Organisation would bear arms for when we already have a well armed, full fledged military and police departments one is at a loss at the propriety of this action. Did it follow due process? What is the justification for this approval? Was any feasibility study of the Civil Defense Corps undertaken or an Organisational Readiness Survey carried out?
Surprisingly, the Interior Minister in conveying this approval implored the corps management and their operatives to "bear the arms with responsibility". This is laughable, firearms are a tool of force and coercion, who has ever borne arms with responsibility? Except there are stringent and enforceable rules and regulations that acts as a restraint.
This is an accident waiting to happen.
This topic should be delicately handled as there are many facets to it depending on the approach one decides to adopt.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, "Bearing of arms" to some extend in my humble opinion is a demonstration of the level of primitiveness that still exists in our minds hence in our society. That, which its utterances from the stone age to colonialism, spoke of nohing but conscious enforcement of ideas and intentions on others.
The hallmark of this point is quite glaring in the shameless way by which the police men standing at check points direct their arms at motorists.
However given the strong-headed disposition and determination in unscrupulous individuals amongst us, It would be tantamount to disaster not to provide some sort of protection for those policing our community and society
Every society is peculiar in their own ways and decisions are taken based on the nature of events confronting her.
My position is such that there should be rules in place to actively evaluate the performance of the armed sector of defence. Any sector found in breach of the rules in terms of abusing the power conferred on her should be brought to the book. Effectively, the menace of "accidental discharge" would be dealt with appropriately and legally. That is not to neglect the dangerous and hostile environments in which these individuals carry out their daily work.
It is really a tricky one!!!!
Dear Comrade,
ReplyDeleteYour comments are balanced and enlightening, especially,your position that "there should be rules in place to actively evaluate the performance of the armed sector of defence. Any sector found in breach of the rules in terms of abusing the power conferred on her should be brought to the book".
My concern on a personal and operations level is that there seem to be neither legislation nor a code of conduct moderating the activities of arms bearing law enforcement personnel. If there are, they do not seem operational as there is no point in recorded memory where a law enforcement officer has been openly investigated and conclusively prosecuted for irresponsible use of firearms.
The Police deploy esprit de corps as an escape route for its employees at every instance in recorded memory.
I am afraid that this would essentially add to the morass, the challenge of the already convoluted situation of armed law enforcement in Nigeria.
Our fears would be assuaged if the government become more open in the build up to its policy formulation. In this case, one would be tempted to ask, is the Civil Defense Corps really a law enforcement apparatus? What are the prequalifications for a law enforcement apparatus to bear arms? And finally, have they, The Civil Defense Corps met the requirements?
It's really a tricky one as you pointed out but the cobwebs would be cleared when openness becomes ingrained into government business.
When the regulations are not clear enough to be enforceable and people bear arms, we never know for whom the bell tolls...
Onwa, one of the current conditionalities of taking multilateral and even bilatreal loans from donor nations is to buy arms from them. The indigenous question is "who will use these arms in Nigeria?" i.e. in a time when conjugate conditionalities attached to the loans in question is the commitment to efficiency and the abhorrence of waste. The arming of the Civil Defence Corps is simply a "mere" consequence of neoliberalism or should I say globalisation.
ReplyDeleteDear Grimotnane,
ReplyDeleteThe following excerpts from your blog aptly captures the root cause of the developmental challenges we have in Africa; it's neither neoliberalism, cutthroat capitalism,any of the other ism's nor globalization. "...And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons." - Terence McKenna
For the past 25 years, I have always asked people who raise the leadership pessimism in Africa issue, "what consistently happened without exception to the few well-known African leaders that were and are remembered by overwhelming consensus to be genuinely dynamic, uncorrupted, intelligent, noble, patriotic, public spirited, visionary or morally responsible?"
ReplyDelete