International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Reviews Vol.11 No.3, December 2021; p. 123 – 131 (ISSN: 2276-8645) 123 PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS AND TERRORISM IN NIGERIA ABDULMALUM D. YAKUBU Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Nigeria. & FESTUS K. AUBYN Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Accra, Ghana. & ABDULMAJID M. NA’INNA Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaduna, Nigeria. Abstract The proliferation of weapons has become one of the major security challenges facing the African continent. The situation of weapons proliferation in Nigeria is not different from what pertains in other African nations. However, one thing which this situation has enhanced in Nigeria is the activities of terrorist in the country. Nigeria’s porous borders is considered the primary source of proliferation of illegal arms into the country. Other sources are weapons captured from confrontations with the Nigerian military and police, weapons provided by political parties for electoral violence/intimidation purposes and weapons directly supplied by Al-Qaeda links to Boko Haram fighters amongst others. Small arms and light weapons are considered simple and portable but in a real due to massive and widespread death and injury, they are considered weapons of mass destruction. Although Nigeria’s problem with weapons is not new, its increasing availability in the last decades has helped stoke a wave of insurgencies, ethno-religious conflicts, cross-border banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, human trafficking and drugs, armed robbery and other violent crimes. Consequently, there is need for Nigerian government to strengthen its control measures against proliferation of small arms and light weapons which by implication will reduce the country’s contemporary challenges such as terrorism and kidnapping for ransom. 1. Introduction The proliferation of weapons has become one of the major security challenges facing the African continent. Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of formerly state-owned small arms and light weapons (SALW) spilt out on the global market, mostly into the hands of non-state actors (Karp, 2007). This further aggravated the destructive new conflict trends. The uncontrolled and widespread availability of weapons has contributed to the fueling of civil wars, crime and communal conflicts and forms of transnational threats which consequently have caused political instability as well as posing a threat to both national security and sustainable development in the continent. Renner (2006) asserts that the proliferation of weapons in Africa has led to about 5,994,000 fatalities over the last 50 years, thus creating a thriving environment for armed crimes, insurgency and terrorism. Weapons proliferation in Nigeria is ubiquitous because of porous borders, poor arms stockpile management by government, the contiguous nature of border communities, lack of transparency in global arms market, weak legislative and deterrent measures, bad governance, activities of local arms transfers and the residues of weapons from other countries that have been in conflicts (e.g. Libya, Mali). Hence, the proliferation of weapons in Africa has not only become a major source of concern for states, but it has also been established that a nexus exists between the spread and proliferation of weapons and the extreme case of criminality, which is terrorism. The resultant effect often results in humanitarian consequences. The worrisome level of this criminality has increased the burden of governance with broader implications for communities and long-