By Owei Lakemfa 
THE good news is that Nigeria  has decided to scale up security at its  airports; the not so welcome news is that this translates to Aviation security personnel carrying guns. I would have preferred scaling up security to mean  greater use of intelligence services, more sophisticated  security machines and more vigilance. As it is, we are already saturated with arms which have not translated into better security; rather, it seems the more arms  we introduce, the less security in the country.

A few years ago, I featured in a Federal Radio Corporation  of Nigeria programme  debating the desirability or otherwise of arming the re-established Nigeria Civil Defence Corps . I argued that we already have too many agencies bearing arms and that our police by its very name, the Nigeria Police Force,  and in practice, had shed  its civil components in favour of force. If the new body is  called ‘Civil’ why turn it into another force? If it is to be armed, what will differentiate it from the police? Now, we have the Corps, armed and behaving exactly like the Police.

I recall under the Babangida regime, we were told that because some smugglers were armed, we need to arm and militarise the Customs and Excise. Today, that agency  is an armed  outfit. Two years ago, I went to the Immigration Office on Airport Road, Abuja and stopped momentarily when  two vans painted in camouflage   drove recklessly to a screeching stop,  and in commando fashion, men in camouflage armed with rifles jumped out.  It was an impressive display of military culture by men, who turned out to be Immigration officers  returning from some patrol.  I recall that in my early twenties,  the Immigration bore no arms.

Nigeria from   the mid-1980s has transformed significantly with more agencies like the  National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, carrying arms on the highways. The Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, almost joined the club of gun wielders a few years ago when there was the argument that with highway robbery, Road Corp Marshalls    needed to be armed. There is a Peace Corps trying to establish itself, if it does, I am sure it will ask for  arms. Given the amount of electoral violence in recent times, soon, there will be a clamour that the Independent National Electoral  Commission, INEC   be  armed. Then the Man’O War Club will follow suit.

Generally, there is proliferation of arms in the country and electoral contests like those in Rivers State have become shoot-outs, and  kidnapping by armed youths, has become ’democratised’ Some years ago, herdsmen grazing cattle were identified by the  staff they carried although it was   assumed they also carried  hidden daggers; now,  the assumption is that they carry AK 47 rifles. The killings in Kaduna and Benue States  imply  that there is an arms flow with both attacker and defender amassing arms. The Boko Haram insurgency in the  North East and renewed militant agitation in the Niger Delta means that there are more guns in circulation.

The proliferation of armed agencies do not necessarily translate into better security. On the specific  issue of arming Aviation security, my position is that there are enough armed agencies at the airport. Just as we have Railway Police and Marine Police, so is there Airport Police specially assigned to the airports. Additionally, the airports have the Air Force with the Airport Commandant being   a senior Air Force Officer. They also have the Army and a number of armed agencies operating in the airports including the Department of State Security, DSS, the Customs and Excise, NDLEA and Immigration. So why do we need the additional militarisation of the airports? I am also worried that there are incessant cases of accidental discharge amongst security agencies especially the  Police,  we do not need to add to these. Besides, passengers need to feel safe and not  look at the nozzle of guns. It can be argued that the various security agencies at the  Airport have their areas  of jurisdiction while the Aviation security cover all areas; what might then be required is, inter-agency cooperation and if necessary, a widening of the coverage areas of the armed agencies.

The inspiration of arming our Aviation security, we are told, is the United States  Transportation Security Administration, TSA.  We need to be careful creating our image in that of America, a militarised and militarist society whose history and actions across the globe, makes its afraid of its own shadows.

The US has a violent culture with acquisition of arms being a constitutional   right. Its genocide against the indigenous Indians, cowboy culture, atrocities against minorities especially the Blacks, its  average 30,000 annual gun deaths and  extra judicial killings, does not make it a good copy.

In my July 11, 2016 column titled  The IGP need not be a policeman, I  had argued that “A primary solution to our policing problems is to make it civil rather than a military outfit like the Americans, their gun culture and their Special Weapons Attack Team, SWAT.”  The SWAT, which is a transformation of policing to internal  military  operations, was established  after the  August 1965  Los Angeles WATT Riots  and designed to repress internal opposition. Under the SWAT, the police carry sub machine guns, sniper rifles, stun grenades, wear heavy body  armour  and drive around in armour cars and vehicles; yet eighty percent of its job is to serve search warrants.

Contrast this with the police in most European countries. Some years ago, I was in Vienna, Austria. After a few days, it occurred to me that I had not seen a policeman. I asked  a resident friend, and he chuckled    asking me to walk twice or thrice across the road when the red sign is on and I will realise that some of those I pass on the road are actually policemen. The countries where the police tend to be civil are quite peaceful compared with the United States; these are the countries we need to model ourselves after.

Doubtlessly, the world is not as safe as it used to be. What we might require  is better intelligence and a campaign to make Nigerians more security conscious.  Generally, the issue of more sectors like   Aviation carrying arms, can  be reduced to one question;  what type of country do we want to  build? I think we should build a security conscious civil society in which we look out for each other and collectively, secure our country.