The Nigeria Police Force police said 1,889 assault rifles/ weapons and 52,577 rounds of live ammunition were recovered from January to December this year.
Force Spokesman, CP Frank Mba who disclosed this in Abuja the weapons recovered include General Purpose Machine Guns, Rocket-Propelled Grenade, variants of Avtomat Kalashnikov, with the popular ones being AK-47 and AK-49, and some locally-fabricated weapons.
He stated that some of the seized arms were manufactured locally , adding that police will continue to mop up illegal arms in circulation.
He said that it is only Defence Industry Corporation (DIC) that has the licensed to manufacture arms locally, saying any other organisation aside this is doing so illegally.
” We carry out intelligence-driven and target-oriented raids on places where we suspect that arms are being illegally manufactured.
” In the last one year, we have been able to burst a lot of these illicit arms manufacturing factories, particularly in Plateau and other parts of the country.”
According to him, police also carry out raids on criminal hideouts to arrest the criminals and recover their weapons as part of efforts to reduce illegal arms in circulation.
“We have been able to identify, crack and dismantle a lot of international smuggling syndicates by working with Interpol and colleagues in neighbouring countries,” he added.( vitalnews)
