Small Armed Conflict Contesting and the Nigerian Internal Security

Abstract

The challenge of security has all over the world been in existence over the centuries. The major concern of all is that, the current security challenges especially in developing countries like Nigeria have taken some new dimensions that expose the limit of the authorities to deal with it. Records have shown that the multi-dimensional global security issues that affect both material and non material aspects have made nations (of the world) busy to tackle. Nigeria as a country facing quite a number of other social issues is bedeviled with such security challenges as ethno-religious crises and militancy, political conflicts, terrorism, assassinations and kidnapping of unprecedented amount. In this study, some conceptual and theoretical as well as empirical issues were identified in a number of related studies. Issues related to SALWs; smuggling and security challenges; theoretical issues on the implications of porous land borders and proliferation of SALWs for Nigeria’s security are reviewed. However, it is pertinent to state that the vast of the available related literature cannot be contained within the limited scope of this work. Therefore, the work presents only texts that are explicitly critical and centrally relevant to the study of smuggling and proliferation of SALW and how the phenomena contest Nigeria’s security landscape.