In December 2012 a 43-year-old Briton, Gary Hyde, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court for illegally shipping weapons to Nigeria. Investigations into the arms deal began in 2007. The Crown Prosecution Service revealed that the consignment was enough to equip a small army and the rounds of ammunition could fill up 37 containers. And in those were 40, 000 AK47 assault rifles, 30, 000 further assault rifles, 10, 000 9mm pistols and 32 million rounds of ammunition.
The deal was worth £808, 000. It fetched Hyde £208, 000 but also earned him a seven-year jail term. Charged with violating the law by not being appropriately licensed to facilitate the shipment, Hyde went through two trials spanning about five years before his conviction.
In far away Nigeria, the final destination of the lethal weapons, it was not clear who the beneficiary was, although it was speculated they were bought on behalf of the Nigerian Police Force. Curiously, no one has bothered to investigate further; the government, the media and all ‘stakeholders’ went to sleep and only woke up after every trace of it had been shaved off their memory.
But we are unable to escape from the reality that arises from shipments like the one Hyde brokered. Boko Haram has swiftly transformed into a sufficiently armed rebel force, able to withstand and, as it has demonstrated on occasions, rattle our soldiers and annex swathes of our once sovereign land. But Hyde’s is only one of many of such illegal consignments that easily permeate our shores and melt into invisible hands that continuously terrorise our people. Yet we grope for Boko Haram’s sources of funds and weapons.
In the race to prematurely criminalise or exonerate Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in light of the allegation linking his private jet to an attempt to illegally procure weapons from South Africa, one thing is clear: we, Nigerians, are often too subjective in our thoughts and postulations. And because we are blinded by our sentiments no one, not even us, takes us seriously.
Defending the CAN president in this matter is not as indefensible as it has been made to appear; after all he is the president’s ardent ally and, therefore, infallible.
President Goodluck Jonathan has a mendacious manner of absolving his friends of blames. Recall how he rejected the MEND owning up to the October 1, 2010 Abuja bombing and, recently, jumped at the opportunity to have Ali Modu Sheriff’s image brilliantly cleansed in Chad. So, it would require less effort to keep Oritsejafor out of troubled waters and even much less if the ripples were in Nigeria- a congregation of happy victims.
The government’s audacious statement claiming responsibility for the procurement, despite manifest inconsistency with reason, is a predictable line in a familiar script. The sombre audience matter very little and their security is even less a priority. If the vigilant South African officials had not bungled it the deal would have sailed through and the jet quietly flown back stashed with weapons, like Hide’s, to boost only God knows whose armoury.
Fighting terror, we repeatedly convince ourselves, needs all hands. But such unity is pointless and helpless if undermined from within and lies, which we consciously procure, are retailed to save complicit but trusted friends’ skins. Even in our pretentious ‘sub-consciousness’ let’s not be unmindful of the fact that terror may not be as selective as we are won’t to believe. Anyone could become an unintended victim.
