An Assessment of Challenges Faced by Security Agencies in Fighting Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Kano State, Nigeria

Abstract

Prevention and management of crime is one of the core mandate responsibilities of security agencies who are peoples that are trained to oversee the internal security system in Nigeria. These agencies includes Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Security and civil Defense Corps, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Customs Service, Directorate of State Security Service(DSSS) and to some certain extend when the level of internal security is over raising Nigeria Militaries, both Land Armies, Air Force and Navy gives intervention hand to curtail the situations. The widespread of small arms and light weapons in Kano State has it is genesis from both locally manufactured and the imported ones that mostly passed from various porous or illegal borders that are located in the neighboring states of Kastina and Jigawa State. SALW are the primary tools that trigger both ethnic and internal conflict and other related violent crimes that poses a threat to internal security, democracy and the operation of good governance not only in Kano State but in Nigeria. SALW is one of the key major factor s that generate to various categories of crime like armed robbery, kidder napping, community violent conflict, insurgent attacks and the host of many other crimes. The paper uses the failed state theory to explain the gap how state as an institution fails in its responsibilities and also the paper is empirical in nature by conducting interviews and administering questionnaire to some selected respondent populations from security personnel’s, academicians, traditional institutions and Community Based Organization’s CBO’s. The paper was on the position that for democracy and good governance to be truly functional the internal security must be guaranteed by empowering security agencies in terms of increasing their number, effective training, enough working tools, good condition of service and providing policies that will address the level of poverty and unemployment in the society as well as prosecuting any member of elite that either imported the arms or given arms to youth for achieving his political interest.