The Southwest Zonal Director of the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW) in Southwest, CP Abiodun Alamutu, on Thursday, urged traditional rulers, community leaders, stakeholders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to initiate awareness campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of illegal arms as part of efforts to address insecurity in the region.

Alamutu, stated this at a One-Day Seminar where Dr. Kunle Olawunmi, from Chrisland University, Abeokuta spoke extensively on the theme” Effective Post-Judgment Management of Small Arms and Light Weapons” (SALW) held at IBD International Hotels in Abeokuta, the Ogun State Capital.

He said that the campaign became necessary to persuade criminals to voluntarily surrendered illegal fire arms and if possible be granted amnesty in return, expressed regret that proliferation of small and light weapons was the major enablers of banditry and insurgency in the country.

The CP said that lamented that the large numbers of the arms circulating in the society are in the hands of non state actors who are not part of any security agencies in the country, noting that most of the arms recorded by the centre were intercepted at the border points of the zone.

“The bulk of the successes and we have recorded had been at the border point those that are about to come into our society. We have made tremendous successes but now we want to divert our attention into mopping up those that are already into circulation and that is why we require the active collaboration of stakeholders, traditional rulers, NGOs community leaders, to talk into the minds of these criminals so that those that will voluntarily bring out these arms we can still think of the possibility of granting amnesty to them.” he said

The CP also called on the judiciary to exercise strict caution in handling weapons submitted as evidence in court, emphasizing that proper security procedures must be followed, warning that if the weapon that has seen inside the courtroom should ever find its way back into the hands of a criminal then such judgement was incomplete.

“This is the critical interval where a weapon transitions from being a piece of legal evidence to becoming a potential security liability. If a forfeited weapon is not handled with absolute procedural integrity, the judgment of the court is not just incomplete, it is undermined. The integrity of our entire legal and security system hinges on a single, non-negotiable principle: no weapon that has seen the inside of a Nigerian courtroom should ever find its way back into the hands of a criminal.”

He explained that the centre’s mandate goes beyond a simple administrative choice or local policy, stressing that it is a binding treaty commitment as a key signatory to the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons which the country is obligated under Article 17 to ensure that all illegally held weapons that are seized or recovered are properly collected and destroyed.

Earlier, the Commissioner of Police, Ogun State Command, CP Bode Ojajuni, called for a joint security agencies unit to be created in Ogun State to coordinate the weapons after they had been mopped up and taken to the centre.

“I feel the centre should divise another avenue to mop up these weapons immediately after the judgement have been delivered from all these unit so that they won’t not wait for the agencies like Police to bring it forward to the centre so that there will be a coordinated approach to handling the weapons because we are all aware that anything could happen to these weapons if there is delay.”