The highly publicized expression of disgust and utter frustration by retired Gen. T Y Danjuma on the lamentable situation of insecurity in the country which led him to call for a universal right to bear arms as an antidote and indeed, a counterforce, to the unend­ing massacres of defenseless Nigerians by Fulani herdsmen and Islamic insurgents is not a new one. These killings have been go­ing on for decades and everything possible should now be done to eliminate the bloody siege or at least establish a balance of force with respect to both offensive and defensive capabilities.

The idea of self-defense is a natural at­tribute of all living things, including hu­man beings and when the situation arises in which someone is evilly keen on taking another’s life, everything humanly possible ought to be applied to avert such tragedies. That is why many objective people are won­dering why would such a preventive pre­scription against insecurity proposed by a General be the subject of baseless societal debates?

The current politically-charged atmo­sphere in which people are unduly par­tisan and parochial in their appraisal of realities may have contributed to raising the decibels of the acrimony that trailed the idea because it is simply natural for people who think they are at the receiving end of extreme brutality within a society that is supposedly under the Rule of Law to devel­op such survivalist feelings especially if they believe that the official constitutional institutions established for their protection are not doing enough.

While it may not be entirely true to as­sert, as Danjuma alleges, that the Nigerian army and other state security agencies are aiding the rampaging herdsmen, it is how­ever a fact that it does appear as if they are actually operationally handicapped in deal­ing with the mounting menace. Ironically, there have been serious casualties inflicted on the military too by the criminals, facts which sufficiently mitigate the blanket con­demnation made by the General. What is however not controvertible is his call for self-defense because it is both a natural right and an instinctive duty for anyone who is under threat to try and defend his own life. Otherwise, it would be nothing but some form of suicide or a defeatist resigna­tion to fate.

The fundamental duty of government in Nigeria is, by virtue of section 14 (b) of the Constitution, described as follows: “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary responsibility of the govern­ment”. In other words, the first duty of government is to provide security for the people and if this duty were diligently given effect to, it would have been unnecessary for the citizens to want to embark on additional self-defense efforts through those devices like forming informal community protec­tive forces, militias or vigilante groups which we now see everywhere.

Unfortunately, Nigerians have helplessly watched in the last several years, the ease with which their personal security, peace and integrity have been wantonly violated by robbers, armed bandits, herdsmen, kid­nappers and a motely crowd of sectarian anarchists with the State seemingly unable to tackle this menace in a timely, credible and responsible manner.

The only reason why criminal bands have been able to terrorize and routinely kill so many innocent citizens all over the country is the fact that their victims have been largely unarmed and defenseless. In the circumstance, idiots and drug addicts who happen to be in possession of AK-47 rifles and other assortment of arms and ammunition have been gleefully attacking and wiping out villages and towns with so much of primitive bravado.

This has created a situation in which the terrorists always enjoy unfair operational advantages and routinely come out tops as the indisputable “conquerors” after each siege. This unbalanced, unchecked resourc­es advantage that they presently enjoy over the rest of innocent Nigerians should be checked by all means possible and that is why some of what Danjuma said ought to be dispassionately considered and applied.

I have noted elsewhere that it is incon­ceivable that a rag-tag outfit like Boko Ha­ram could have summoned the courage, let alone the arrogance, to lay siege on the country, seize more than nearly three hun­dred school girls from Chibok and, recently, from Dapchi and continue to carry out the incessant razing of towns and villages lead­ing to the massive displacement of so many people if their victims could offer them the most elementary of armed resistance. In normal times, it would be outrageous to sug­gest that we arm every citizen but these are not normal times.

The obvious imbalance in the arsenals of the parties has created a near one-sid­ed slaughter so far. In the circumstance, thoughts about self-defense and self-pres­ervation, if not revenge, would not be too far away.

The Constitution of Nigeria and, indeed, the universal law of nature, recognise the instinctive human inclination to self-de­fense. The right to life is meaningless if the holder has no means to defend it against an attacker whose only reason to want to do so is that he has a gun while his victim target is unarmed.

It is the same opportunistic logic that has emboldened armed robbers who, in some bizarre cases, arrogantly send advance notices of their pending invasion and the citizens’ only option is to either run away from home or, in some pitiable instances, wait and pray that if and when they come, they would limit themselves to just taking away their properties and sparing their lives. The gruesome reality however is that, sometimes, they take both their lives and their properties!

In the specific case of Boko Haram, their cowardly and unprovoked attacks on inno­cent citizens and the subsequent audacious pillaging are usually followed by the hypo­critical ranting of “Allah Akbar!” The real­ity here is that it is their superior weapons, and nothing more, that have proved deadly “Great” in the circumstance.

In many respects, Nigerians are today in very similar, if not worse, situation of distrust for the government to protect their lives and property than that which confront­ed the Americans more than two hundred years ago. Their solution then was to pro­mulgate the Second Amendment to their Constitution which provides, inter alia, that: “A well-regulated Militia being neces­sary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” This amendment has wo­ven itself into the fabric of the American society, so deeply that abandoning it now has become very difficult in spite of the rising incidents of avoidable gun-related violence in that country due to the uncon­trolled availability of guns.

No matter the position one takes on the contemporary jurisprudential/ideologi­cal disputation surrounding that clause, it remains the undeniable fact that as a result of the common understanding that everyone is entitled to own a gun in the US, the kind of swagger with which criminals arrogantly stroll into homes, towns and villages in Nigeria, slitting the throats of innocent humans like rams and chickens, can never happen there because everyman’s home is his own garrison. Ev­ery attacker expects a likely return of fire from the attacked, thereby creating some practical deterrence.

As I have previously argued extensively elsewhere, the necessity for the right to bear arms is predicated on the level of insecuri­ty in society. Ordinarily, the responsibility to safeguard the realm is that of the State within the philosophical framework of the proverbial Social Contract. But as Bertrand Rousseau, one of the key proponents of the rule forcefully asserted, the People always reserve to themselves the right to retrieve the delegated responsibility of providing security from the State whenever they think that the State has defaulted in its respon­sibility to defend them. Nigeria has long arrived at that point where armed citizens self-defense is constitutionalized.