FROM PROLIFERATION TO VIOLENCE: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF SMALL ARMS AND LIGHT WEAPONS IN NIGERIA’S CONFLICT LANDSCAPE

Abstract

Illicit small arms and light weapons sustain much of the armed violence that Nigeria has experienced since the return to civilian rule. This study examines how the circulation of these weapons has shaped the country's conflict landscape, and asks whether the African Union Master Roadmap of Practical Steps to Silence the Guns in Africa has slowed that circulation. The study is a documentary analysis. Evidence was drawn from the Small Arms Survey, United Nations and African Union instruments, reports of the International Crisis Group and the Institute for Security Studies, peer-reviewed scholarship and national press records published between 2011 and 2021, and was examined thematically through the lens of transnationalism. Three findings emerge. First, the scale of civilian firearm holding in Nigeria is considerably smaller than the figure of 350 million weapons that circulates widely in national reporting: the Small Arms Survey places civilian holdings at approximately 6.2 million in 2017, and the national survey commissioned by the Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons estimates 6.4 to 6.5 million. The scale is nonetheless substantial, and it is the distribution rather than the aggregate that drives violence. Second, the weapons in circulation sustain several distinct conflict systems simultaneously, including insurgency in the North East, armed banditry and mass abduction in the North West, farmer-herder violence in the North Central zone, and militancy and cult violence in the south. Third, the Master Roadmap has not reduced the flow, because its instruments address the supply of weapons while the conditions that sustain demand in Nigeria remain largely untouched. The study concludes that weak political will, the porosity of the land borders and the complicity of some officials account for the persistence of the trade, and recommends that regional instruments be matched by domestic measures addressing unemployment, impunity and the grievances from which armed groups recruit.