PART ONE: The Guns, The Ships, and the Shadow Network

WATERWAYSNEWS.NG | Ports & Security | Investigative Report Lagos/Abuja — February 2026

The wooden crates arrived at Tincan Island Port looking unremarkable — just another shipment of building materials. Listed on the manifest as plaster of Paris cement, the 20-foot container cleared preliminary checks and moved deeper into the terminal. It was only when Customs officers cracked open the bags that the truth emerged: packed inside 516 sacks of white powder were 440 pump-action rifles, their barrels oiled and ready for use.

That 2017 discovery — which eventually led to a landmark court conviction — is just one chapter in a far larger and more disturbing story: a story of industrial-scale weapons trafficking that exploits Nigeria’s ports, corrupts its officials, and feeds the violence tearing communities apart across the country.

Advertisement

1,599 Guns and a Handover That Tells a Bigger Story

On a Thursday morning in early 2026, officials of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) gathered at the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone “A” in Ikeja, Lagos, for a formal handover ceremony. On one side stood Customs officers. On the other, representatives of the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW), acting on behalf of National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who was represented by Johnson Kokumo, the NCCSALW Director General.

The inventory was sobering: 1,599 assorted firearms and 2,298 live cartridges, all seized during anti-smuggling operations. The weapons were transferred to NCCSALW for secure custody, ensuring they could not find their way back onto Nigerian streets or into the hands of the bandits and insurgents who have made whole regions of the country ungovernable.

The Comptroller-General of Customs used the occasion to highlight a significant legal milestone — the successful prosecution of Suit No. FHC/L/339C/2018 before the Federal High Court in Lagos. The court convicted Great James Oil and Gas Limited, Ifeuwa Moses Christ, and Emeka Umeh Festus, also known as Amankwa, on eight separate counts of arms importation offences. It was, officials declared, proof that the system could work.

But for many security analysts watching from the sidelines, one conviction offers thin comfort against the tide.

Advertisement

A Country Drowning in Illegal Guns

To understand why a handover of 1,599 firearms matters — and yet feels insufficient — one must understand the sheer scale of the crisis. Security researchers estimate that Nigeria may account for as much as 70 percent of the illicit small arms and light weapons circulating across West Africa. With an estimated 500 million illegal weapons on the continent, that figure points to over 350 million inside Nigeria’s borders alone.

The geography is part of the problem. Nigeria’s Minister of Interior has publicly acknowledged over 1,499 irregular entry points into the country, compared to just 84 official border crossings. In Adamawa State alone, approximately 25 illegal routes cut across the borders with neighbouring countries. The ECOWAS Protocol on free movement — designed to promote regional integration — has in practice also created corridors that arms traffickers exploit with ease.

But land borders tell only part of the story. Nigeria’s seaports — Apapa, Tincan Island, Onne, Calabar — have increasingly become entry points for military-grade weapons disguised as legitimate commercial cargo. The weapons do not walk themselves in. They need help.

Advertisement

Inside the Smuggling Playbook: How Guns Hide in Plain Sight

The methods are as varied as they are brazen. Weapons have been found hidden inside bags of cement, buried behind legitimate goods in 40-foot shipping containers, and declared under entirely false manifest descriptions. A favourite technique is to mix contraband with high-volume, low-scrutiny commodities — bulk goods whose weight and packaging offer natural camouflage.

The Tincan Island case is textbook. A clearing and forwarding agent, Emeka Umeh Festus, had used cloned documents in the name of Great James Oil and Gas Limited to obtain import paperwork from the Nigeria Customs Service. The weapons — sourced from Turkey — were arranged by Ifeuwa Moses Christ, who coordinated the overseas leg of the operation while local agents managed port logistics. They very nearly succeeded.

The July 2024 seizure at Onne Port in Port Harcourt followed a strikingly similar pattern. Customs officers intercepted 844 rifles — including 764 Tomahawk Jojef Magnum Black Pump Action Rifles and 10 Verney Caron Gunmakers models — alongside 112,500 rounds of live ammunition, all inside a container that had sailed from Turkey. Investigators found evidence that the importer had actually paid $2.7 million in duty for the container, in an apparent attempt to legitimise the cargo and move it through a private bonded terminal without attracting scrutiny.

It was a miscalculation that would lead to ten arrests.

Advertisement

The Insider Threat: When the Gatekeepers Open the Gate

The weapons could not flow at this scale without active complicity inside the system. Research by organisations including the Institute for Security Studies has established that Nigeria’s seaports and waterways have become hotspots for illicit firearms trade, networks involving not just foreign suppliers and local businessmen, but corrupt security personnel embedded within the port apparatus itself. Between 2010 and 2017 alone, an estimated 21.5 million weapons and rounds of ammunition were shipped into Nigeria through these channels.

Customs clearing agents are the first and most critical link in the chain. They prepare import documentation, liaise with shipping lines, and interact directly with port officials. A compromised agent can misclassify cargo, alter weight or content declarations, and steer containers towards sympathetic scanners — or away from X-ray machines altogether.

The rot often goes deeper. In 2013, a senior Customs official was arrested for allegedly facilitating the movement of trucks loaded with arms and ammunition for Boko Haram insurgents, one of the most explosive insider-complicity cases in Nigerian port history. A decade later, in 2023, two clearing agents — Shokunbi Olanrewaju of Shooler Global International Ltd and Joseph Nwadiodor — were detained at a Lagos port after arriving to take delivery of a container in which weapons had been concealed.

Following the 2024 Onne seizure, Customs authorities suspended the licences of all warehouses, terminals, and clearing agents involved. The principal suspect, Ali Samson Ofoma, was tracked down and arrested in Abuja alongside nine accomplices — including Okechukwu Gabriel Charles, Kingsley Mbibi, and Akinkuade Mayowa Segun. All now face prosecution.

Advertisement

Why It Is a Crime — And Why the Law Matters

The importation of firearms without authorisation has long been a criminal offence under Nigeria’s Firearms Act of 1959, which classifies weapons strictly and reserves military-grade arms for security agencies. To legally own a firearm, a private individual or organisation must obtain approval from the Inspector-General of Police or, in sensitive cases, the Presidency itself.

The rationale is straightforward. When weapons bypass this vetting framework, they go directly to actors the state has had no opportunity to scrutinise — criminal gangs, secessionist agitators, mercenaries, or foreign-backed armed factions. Each illegal rifle that enters the country is a potential instrument of homicide, community displacement, or mass atrocity.

Recognising that the 1959 framework was insufficient for a 21st-century security environment, President Bola Tinubu signed the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons Act into law on June 4, 2024 — a landmark piece of legislation that provides a comprehensive legal backbone for interdiction, prosecution, and international cooperation on arms trafficking. It signals, at the highest level of government, that illegal weapons are a national security emergency, not merely a customs infraction.

The Human Cost Behind the Statistics

For the families in Zamfara displaced by bandits armed with AK-variants, for the traders in Anambra living under the shadow of unknown gunmen, for the farmers in the Middle Belt who cannot return to their land — the provenance of the weapons used against them is rarely known. What is known is the cost: lives lost, children orphaned, communities abandoned.

Many of the guns being used in those theatres of violence were once, at some point, exactly like the ones now sitting in a secured facility in Ikeja — anonymous items in an unmarked container, moving quietly through a busy port, relying on a falsified document and a complicit signature to complete their journey.

Advertisement

That is the story the 1,599 guns tell. Not just a customs success. A warning.

Part Two of this investigation examines how justice has been — and has not been — served in arms smuggling cases, and what Nigeria must now do to close the gaps that keep the blood cargo flowing.

— Waterwaysnews.ng | Ports & Security Investigative Desk

Advertisement