Weapons that have been used
in inter-communal vio-
lence that has killed thou-
sands of people in northern Nigeria
have been trafficked from Ivory Coast,
Libya and Turkey, according to a new
report by the Conflict Armament Re-
search group.
Fighting between farmers and
semi-nomadic herders over land has
gone on for decades in Nigeria ́s cen-
tral belt and north. Attacks on civil-
ians by armed groups aligned with the
communities have killed more than
3,600 people and displaced 300,000
since 2014, according to the study.
Armed groups involved in the fight-
ing in Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara
states possessed “significant numbers
of factory-produced small arms man-
ufactured in Europe, East Asia, the
Middle East and North America,” ac-
cording to the three-year study.
Some of the weapons were from
Turkey and were linked to a major or-
ganized trafficking network, the group
said.
Assault rifles from Iraq and simi-
lar to ones used by Islamic extremist
groups in Mali and Niger also were
found. However, the organization said
that while weapons may have come
from the same illicit source, that did
not demonstrate a connection be-
tween the conflict in Nigeria and Is-
lamic extremist groups.
“Nigerian authorities have made
strides in gathering illicit weapons
from these communities over the last
three years,” said Conflict Armament
Research’s head of regional operations
in West Africa, Claudio Gramizzi.
“Preventing their rapid replacement
requires efforts by law enforcement
across the Sahel, as well as targeted in-
terdiction of new arms being trafficked
from Europe and Western Asia.”
