Small Arms: Destination Unknown
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN
Late last June, a Ukrainian aircraft departing from the Croatian capital of Zagreb made an emergency landing in the northern Nigerian city of Kano en route to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. When Kano International Airport officials discovered external page18 crates of mines and ammunition on board, Nigerian security officials impounded the plane, cargo and seven-person crew and began an official investigation.
Seventeen days later, the external pageUkrainian plane, registered as UR-CAK, suddenly departed the airport after external pagethe government of Nigeria announced it had conducted several investigations and was “satisfied that the 18 crates of arms and ammunition aboard the plane truly belong[ed] to the Equatorial Guinea government.”
After the plane departed, the Kyiv Post, external pagea private Ukrainian news company, reported that “According to the Ukrainian Embassy in Nigeria, the plane of the Ukrainian air company Meridian was released on August 4 due to [the] effective work of Ukrainian diplomats [and that] on the same day the plane arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, which was the point of destination.”
external pageUkrainian state media reported that the UR-CAK was “carrying 60-mm and 82-mm mortar shells under a contract signed between Cyprus-registered Infora Limited and the Defense Ministry of Equatorial Guinea.”
The external pagestate-owned UkrSpetsEksport, the Ukrainian government's chief designated company for exports and imports of military and dual-purpose commodities and services, external pagetold the BBC that the cargo did not belong to Ukraine.
The situation has caused a mild controversy in Nigerian media amid heightened public concerns over arms that are being illegally imported and sold to the external pageMovement for the Liberation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the largest active militant (umbrella) group in Nigeria.
On the day the plane landed in Kano, MEND external pageconcluded its third attack in a week on an oil pipeline that belonged to the Italian company Agip. The two prior attacks were against a major crude oil trunk line controlled by Royal Dutch Shell and a Chevron oil station in the Niger Delta region.
Covert arms trade: Plane and simple
According to an external pageonline aviation photo database, the Ukrainian plane has been photo documented since 2007 in places like Warsaw, Glasgow, Maastricht, Luxembourg, Bucharest and Malta Luqa, Malta. Before landing in Nigeria, the external pagelast known photograph of the aircraft was taken on 14 June 2009 at the Ljubljana airport in Slovenia.
Although the government of external pageEquatorial Guinea made mention of the arms shipment to the Nigerian Foreign Ministry and national security advisor, Nigerian security officials have heightened suspicions of Ukrainian aircrafts that have been “established [to be] a major source of arms and ammunition to the militants [of the Niger Delta].”
However, when the investigation ended and the plane departed Kano airport, external pageNigerian military officials refused to external pagecomment as to whether the plane had departed with all or some of its cargo.
“Security agents in Nigeria have not been very open regarding this matter and there are rumors that the [Ukrainian] agents carrying the arms refused to bribe their Nigerian counterparts at the Kano airport, so the Nigerians decided to burst the bubble. This is one common [but] unsubstantiated media claim,” Nigerian media consultant and journalist for AfricaNews, Victor Emeruwa told ISN Security Watch.
“I believe it was an arms deal that was intercepted,” said Emeruwa.
external pageAfriquejet reported that Nigerian military Joint Task Force (JTF) spokesman Colonel Rabe Abubakar said all the scenarios involving the cargo aircraft and its content bore all the hallmarks of arms smuggling and dismissed reports that the weapons were covered by proper documentation.
Abubakar later stated that “The propeller-type plane used in this illegal shipment at Kano is designed for short take-off and landing even in unconventional jungle airstrips, and is used worldwide for illegal arms and drug trafficking. This indicates a clandestine dimension of the militants and militancy in the region and Nigeria as a whole.”
Stepan Havrysh, the first deputy secretary of the National Defense and Security Council of Ukraine, external pageflatly denied Ukraine was a major arms supplier to MEND forces and accused Nigerian media of hyperbole, libel and provocation.
The UK connection
On 19 August 2009, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband asked senior members of parliament (MP) to “suppress evidence of arms sales […] after a group of MPs were handed a document detailing the arms sales by the deputy foreign minister in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine.”
The Guardian later reported how the MPs responded to the revelation:
“The document contained a list of UK registered brokers to whom the Ukrainian State Service for Export Control had licensed the export of collectors' items (light arms) from the Soviet stockpile of weapons. We were alarmed to see that the end users on the list included countries for which there are Foreign and Commonwealth Office restrictions on the export of strategic goods."
The MPs noted that “some of the massive stockpiles of ex-Soviet weapons in Ukraine have ended up in undesirable locations,” and then specifically cited the landing of the UR-CAK aircraft in Nigeria.
“It is difficult to deal with arms without the aid of security or military agents, so I strongly believe that military [officials] in Nigeria have some type of [connection] with the arms [found] in the Niger Delta. external pageThe Boko Haram group, a new sect threatening the peace and security of Nigeria, are using sophisticated weaponry that would have to have been imported into the country. If arms are coming into the country, then it is most likely that security operatives must be aiding its entrance. That’s the simple logic,” Emeruwa told ISN Security Watch.
Whatever happened in Nigeria has allowed - either by perception or in reality - a brief glimpse into the illicit arms trade that occurs on a global scale. If only for a brief time, relations between Ukraine and Nigeria were surely strained as a result of the UR-CAK landing that has helped continue the discussion on post-Cold War arms proliferation throughout West African states.