As early as 2018, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (retd), a former Minister of Defence and elder statesman who has few rivals in the knowledge of what is happening inside the Nigerian Army, told Nigerians to defend themselves against killers in the country, saying the armed forces were not ready to defend them.

“Our armed forces are not neutral,” Danjuma had warned. “They collude with the bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians. The armed forces guide their movements; they cover them. If you are depending on the armed forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one.” Unfortunately, since 2018, no action of the Federal Government and its security agencies has given Nigerians any reason to doubt Theophilus Danjuma.

From Nigerians’ reactions to the recent Chief of Army Staff’s opposition to self-defence, it is obvious that Nigerians are in agreement that people should be allowed to bear arms defend themselves against terrorists. The Middle Belt Forum, the Yoruba socio-political Organisation, Afenifere; Jama ‘atu Nasril Islam, JNI, and the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, have all supported the call for self-defence against marauding terrorists.    Their proviso for supporting the activation of man’s inalienable right to self-defence as enshrined in different constitutions and charters across the world is “in the event that the army and other state security agencies fail to protect the people.”

And it has been proven over and over again by endless re-occurrence of the massacre that the state security agencies have failed to protect the people of Plateau and other parts of Nigeria. What other proof does anyone need than the fact that it has happened over and over again, even after the Christmas Eve killings in 25 Plateau communities? Unfortunately for advocates of no self-defence, nature has configured human beings, and indeed all animals, to fight to finish if they realise they will be killed no matter what they do.

Those who tread the wrong paths in life always end up at the destinations they were trying to avoid. We hereby warn that denying endangered people their inalienable rights to bear arms to defend themselves may actually lead to the very anarchy the Army Chief fears, because a dying person has nothing to lose by fighting to finish, if he is going to die anyway.    

In addition to allowing endangered people to bear arms in the absence of serial failure by state security agencies to stop the killings, the states Houses of Assembly, the National Assembly, the Presidency, all ethnic nationalities and stakeholders, should come together to put in place the necessary mechanism for restructuring the country. This will bring government security agencies closer to the people.