When House Opts for Private Defence

Contractors to Tackle Insecurity

With its recent call for the engagement of private security contractors to tackle the security challenges facing the country, the House of Representatives may have given up hope on the ability of the federal government to deploy its security forces to defeat bandits and insurgents, Adedayo Akinwale writes

For over 10 years, Nigeria has contended with an insurgency in the North-east zone, resulting in a steady occurrence of catastrophic outbreaks with the attendant loss of lives and property. Furthermore, killing of farmers by herdsmen, banditry, cattle rustling and communal clashes in North-west and North-central regions have also exacerbated.

Following the security crisis, it wasn’t a coincidence that when the Ninth House of Representatives launched its Legislative Agenda, security was part of the social menace it planned to solve through legislative action.

The lawmakers acknowledged that the numbers of active-duty servicemen and women in the police and other security agencies were insufficient to meet the challenges facing the country.

Thus, the House promised to work with the national security agencies – police, army, civil defence – to determine the needs and provide funding for the strategy to be met.

Recently, a member of the House of Representatives, representing Chikun/Kajuru federal constituency of Kaduna State, Hon. Yakubu Barde, lamented that bandits were abducting health workers to serve as health personnel in their camps.

He said the health personnel recently abducted in Kaduna were treating wounded bandits.

The lawmaker said the recent abduction of two nurses at the leprosy hospital in the state was part of the new strategy by the bandits. According to him, the families of the two abducted nurses informed him that bandits were not willing to release the nurses, but were instead planning to keep them to serve as medical personnel.

He stated: “I have visited the families, and from their conversations with the abductors, they told them they have gotten staff – that they are never going to release them —that those nurses will be working for them, to treat their wounded members—who are wounded in the battle with the military. So the hope of them coming back……I don’t know what kind of magic can bring them back. Honestly, the government has failed in terms of providing security for my constituents.”

Barde therefore urged the government to seek the help of developed nations to combat general insecurity in the country.

Lawmakers Opt for Private Defence Contractors

Since the inauguration of the Ninth House on June 11, 2019, a number of resolutions have been passed as part of the efforts to tackle the security crisis facing the country, but none has been given consideration by the federal government. However, the Ninth House under the leadership of the Speaker, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, went a step further when it organised a security summit aimed at providing solutions to the intractable security challenges facing the country.

As part of the recommendations from the security summit, the House called on the federal government to immediately consider the use of private defence contractors for targeted security operations to combat insurgency and terrorism in the country.

Reading the recommendations of the summit which were laid before the House on July 8, 2021, Gbajabiamila said the Green Chamber also called for immediate enhanced training for the Police Mobile Unit to improve their capacity to deal with insecurity. The House added that a special team of 40,000 Police Mobile Unit officers should undergo this special training, while 1,000 should be deployed in every state for immediate operations in the North-east, while the South-west and South-east can receive the remaining officers out of the 40,000 officers.

The House also called on the federal government to create a new team under the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to train and work with the guards of Nigeria’s forest, saying this unit would collaborate with the current Forest Guards who will remain under the control of the 36 states of the federation. It urged the federal government to encourage the intelligence agencies working with the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Chief of Defence Staff to initiate a screening and vetting programme of all frontline officers of the Nigerian military to fish out moles and double agents who have so far compromised most efforts at combating insecurity and wining the war against insurgents and terrorists.

It lawmakers also urged the federal government to “Give immediate consideration to the use of private defence contractors for targeted security operations to combat insurgency and terrorism especially.”

The House further urged the direct use of the Nigerian Police Trust Fund to procure some of the immediate equipment needed by the rank-and-file police officers in Nigeria, adding that this intervention would include the procurement of modern critical equipment for the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) as specified by the leadership of the NPF.

It also called on the federal government to support the creation of local security committees in all the 774 local government areas, adding that the panel should include traditional rulers, religious institutions and local opinion leaders, which should be managed by the NPF as part of its community policing mandate.

The House further urged the federal government to deploy early warning systems nationwide including installation of CCTV cameras and other surveillance, satellite and electronic equipment along major highways, public places and major cities and borders, while also urging the government to establish and strengthen a National Crisis Centre (NCC) within the Nigerian Police. It added that the NCC would be the national coordinating centre for all civil security response actions and monitoring of resolutions of such with monthly reporting on all incidents.

The lower chamber added that the country must take major steps to control the flow of illegal arms into the country, by strengthening the control of the country’s borders to detect and seize any illegal shipment of arms into the country, arrest and prosecute any person associated with the illegal flow of arms into the country.

The House said Nigeria should reach out to overseas arms dealers to enlist their cooperation against the sale of arms to non-state actors, stressing that there should be a major diplomatic initiative with the governments of countries known to have companies engaged in selling arms to non-state actors.

“Continuous arms collection and depository scheme should be established nationally to encourage disposal and collection of illegal firearms. The federal government should strengthen and instruct widespread use of the centralised national criminal database by the NPF and mandate access for other security agencies, providing resources to ensure this can be done, saying this should also include modernisation of the national fingerprint database.”

Analysts believe that for the legislative arm of government to call on the federal government to hire machinery to combat insecurity in the country showed that the present administration might have ran out of ideas on how to deploy government ‘security forces to restore peace in the country.

However, whether or not the federal government will implement the recommendations of the House, which were submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari, shortly before the National Assembly proceeded on its annual vacation last month, remains a matter of conjecture.