Former army chief Abdulrahman Dambazau has said that non-state actors in the Sahel region possess 14 million firearms.

Mr Dambazzau, the Nigerian ambassador designate to China, disclosed this in an interview in Abuja on Tuesday. He said that out of the number, 11 million are within the stretch of West Africa towards Central Africa

The ex-army chief said that insecurity in Nigeria was a complex and regional problem that required a regional approach to address it. He added that the problem was not unique to Nigeria, adding that one of the major contributors to insecurity in the country and the Sahel region was the proliferation of firearms, and a partnership was therefore needed to fight it.

According to Mr Dambazau, the issue of proliferation of firearms within the Sahel, as of the last count, the statistics shows that there are over 14 million firearms in the hands of non-state actors in the region.

“Out of this 14 million, about 11 million are within the stretch of West Africa towards Central Africa. You can guess that because of the activities of non-state actors within Nigeria and because of our population, quite a lot of these firearms are also in Nigeria. And these firearms are not manufactured here. In fact, they are not manufactured in Africa.

“They come from somewhere. So you need a partnership to deal with that proliferation, but first, you have to identify the source and block the source. Again to be able to sweep the excess firearms in the hands of non-state actors will require some technology, which we may not have,” Mr Dambazau explained.

The ambassador-designate also said that cross-border issues were another major contributor to insecurity in the country as Nigeria was a signatory of the ECOWAS protocol on the movement of people, goods, and services.

“Although this movement, a lot of things are happening. We have a border, for instance, with Niger of 1,400 kilometres. It’s impossible for us to physically protect this border. So what do we do?

“We need to fill the gap. So we need modern technology, high-tech, to fill the gap. For instance, probably looking at this, I could leverage my position as ambassador to bear in mind that the Chinese have such technology in monitoring movements and activities, and so on.

“We can leverage on that to be able to fill the gap. But also, monitoring activities is not enough without the capacity to respond. So as you are monitoring, you see activity of the enemy, then you must have the capacity to respond,” added Mr Dambazau.

(NAN)