Nigeria’s weapons-control architecture has moved to reinforce the integrity of the process surrounding major illicit arms seizures, with the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW) confirming that 3,199 assorted automatic weapons intercepted by the Nigeria Customs Service at Atinkan Island remain secured in the Centre’s armoury, while two suspects linked to the alleged illegal importation remain in custody.
Desk: Defence & Security
Date: 1 September 2026
Time: 14:30 WAT
Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Author: Nokai Origin
NCCSALW confirms 3,199 automatic weapons intercepted at Atinkan Island Port remain secured after formal handover by Nigeria Customs Service, as Nigeria strengthens illicit arms control, prosecution, weapons destruction, stockpile security and efforts to dismantle illegal firearms trafficking networks.
The clarification by the Director General of the NCCSALW, retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Johnson Kokumo, came during the Joint Security Press Briefing in Abuja on Tuesday, following questions from defence and security correspondents about claims circulating in a viral video concerning the origin and handling of the intercepted weapons.
Kokumo, who personally attended the handover of the weapons at the Atinkan Island port alongside the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, rejected the claims as inaccurate and explained that the weapons were formally intercepted by Customs and subsequently handed over to the NCCSALW for secure custody. He stressed that the Customs Comptroller-General was present in the same capacity for the handover, while his own presence was to personally receive the consignment on behalf of the Centre.
The clarification places the emphasis on what happens after an illicit weapons shipment is intercepted, an increasingly important element of Nigeria’s broader effort to prevent recovered firearms from being diverted back into criminal networks.
According to the NCCSALW, the intercepted weapons are currently held in a secured armoury, while the two suspects arrested in connection with the alleged illegal importation remain in custody as investigations continue. The Centre said the investigation is intended not only to establish the circumstances surrounding the attempted importation but also to identify criminal elements within Nigeria and possible international partners involved in the movement of illicit weapons.
The Atinkan Island clarification also fits into a wider weapons-control process in which recovered firearms are transferred from frontline interception agencies into a system of secure custody, investigation and eventual disposal. Kokumo explained that the destruction of recovered illicit weapons is consistent with Nigeria’s obligations under international and regional conventions, including the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons.
The objective, he said, is to ensure that weapons removed from criminal circulation do not eventually return to the hands of non-state actors and become available for use against Nigerian communities. That principle has underpinned the Centre’s continuing public destruction exercises, which are designed to take illicit weapons permanently out of circulation rather than allow recovered firearms to become another potential source of diversion.
The latest figures show the scale of that process. During the Centre’s second-quarter arms destruction exercise on 30 July 2026 at the Muhammadu Buhari Cantonment, Giri, Abuja, 1,419 illicit weapons were publicly destroyed, taking the cumulative number of weapons destroyed by the NCCSALW since 2022 to more than 19,000.
The Centre has simultaneously continued receiving weapons recovered by other security and law-enforcement agencies. In June 2026, it retrieved 5,050 illicit, unserviceable, decommissioned and obsolete assorted automatic weapons from the Nigeria Police Force, while the Nigeria Customs Service handed over 399 JOJEF automatic guns intercepted in August. Additional quantities of illicit weapons were also recovered from the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency and the National Intelligence Agency.
The enforcement chain extends beyond the physical recovery of firearms to the prosecution of those involved in their trafficking and manufacture. The Centre, working with the Office of the Federal Director of Public Prosecution and the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, is pursuing cases involving suspects linked to illegal importation, trafficking and local manufacture of firearms and ammunition.
One of the significant cases involves 11 suspects connected to the alleged illegal importation of 844 assorted automatic firearms and 112,500 rounds of ammunition contained in a container intercepted at Onne Port by the Nigeria Customs Service before being handed over to the NCCSALW. The Centre said the principal suspects remain in custody, while investigations continue to establish the wider network and locate fleeing suspects.
The Centre is also confronting what Kokumo described as an increasingly sophisticated dimension of local firearms production. He noted that while artisanal firearms have historically been associated with local hunters and communities, some locally manufactured weapons are now sophisticated enough to resemble imported firearms, including AK-47 rifles.
That development is shaping a dual approach to local production. While the NCCSALW is targeting criminal manufacturers involved in illicit firearms production, Kokumo indicated that technically skilled individuals among local producers could potentially be identified and redirected into legitimate national production, turning useful technical capacity away from criminal activity and towards national service.
The broader strategy also includes preventing legally held weapons from leaking into illicit circulation. Between 18 May and 19 June 2026, the Centre conducted Physical Security and Stockpile Management training for personnel of government arms-bearing security agencies, aimed at strengthening safeguards around weapons already within the legitimate state-controlled stockpile.
The Centre is further working to update Nigeria’s understanding of the national arms environment. A Baseline Workshop on Small Arms Survey in Nigeria held on 20 August brought together representatives from the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa, the Small Arms Survey, arms-bearing security agencies and relevant government institutions.
The workshop represents the initial stage of a review of Nigeria’s 2016 National Arms Survey, with the Centre acknowledging that the existing assessment no longer adequately captures current realities. A new national survey is expected to provide a more contemporary evidence base for understanding the scale and character of illicit arms proliferation and informing future control measures.
The NCCSALW’s latest interventions therefore reveal an arms-control architecture increasingly concerned with the entire lifecycle of illicit weapons: interception, formal handover, secure custody, investigation, prosecution, destruction and prevention of diversion. The clarification over the Atinkan Island seizure is significant within that chain because it establishes what happened to one of the country’s major recent weapons recoveries while demonstrating how recovered firearms are being moved into an institutional control process rather than left outside formal custody.
For Nigeria’s wider security architecture, that distinction matters. The effectiveness of an arms-control system is determined not only by how many weapons security agencies intercept, but by whether those weapons remain securely controlled afterwards, whether the networks behind them are identified and prosecuted, and whether the firearms are ultimately prevented from returning to the illicit market.
🏷️Tags: NCCSALW, Johnson Kokumo, Atinkan Island, illicit arms, arms trafficking, small arms and light weapons, Nigeria Customs Service, weapons seizure, arms control, firearms proliferation
#ZigDiariesDefence #ZigOriginals #NCCSALW #ArmsControl #IllicitArms #ArmsTrafficking #SmallArms #NigeriaSecurity #ZigDiaries
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