FIVE years ago Lionel Rawlins pitched up in Yola, north-eastern Nigeria, to run security for the American University there. This was a dangerous spot even before Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency gathered momentum, yet the former marine found only “a ragtag team of guards who couldn’t protect anyone from anything”. Rather than clean up the mess, he had another idea: to set up his own private security force instead. Today the university is guarded by a hundreds-strong force of his well-turned-out recruits.
Private security is big business in Nigeria. The country suffers bombings in the north, sectarian violence in the centre and simmering insecurity in the oil-producing south-east. Red24, a Scottish security firm, says more than 600 people are kidnapped in the country every year, putting it among the five worst for that sort of crime.
Companies know better than to risk employees’ lives, or litigation, so they hire guards to scan bags at banks and shopping malls or to vet visitors to private residential estates. For about $1,500 a month, khaki-clad police units escort fat cats through the grinding Lagos traffic. Police and army stand to attention outside fortified embassies in Abuja or oil installations in the Niger delta. Between 2007 and 2009, while an insurgency seethed in the fuel-rich region, Shell splurged $383m, 40% of its global security budget, in Nigeria.The last comprehensive study of the sector, conducted a decade ago, found between 1,500 and 2,000 private security companies in Nigeria. The figure has probably risen.
Because they cannot legally carry weapons, armed units must be hired from national forces. This can breed indiscipline: “When there is corruption at the top, you expect it at the bottom,” notes one security provider. He recalls sending a police guard back to headquarters for shaking down passers-by. Another company experienced a run-in with a mobile police unit whose men liked to fire their guns to “announce their arrival”. “We don’t control them,” sighed an oil executive in Port Harcourt after waiting an hour for an escort.
Private companies pay the security forces handsomely. But that also encourages commanders to hire out their men. The result is a privatisation of public security, reckons Rita Abrahamsen, a professor at the University of Ottawa. In 2011 a retired deputy inspector-general estimated that up to 100,000 police officers (about a third of the country’s total) were working for “a few fortunate individuals”, and questioned what that meant for regular Nigerians. Martin Ewence, a British naval commander turned consultant, reckons that the navy in effect has “given over its maritime security responsibilities”.
In the worst cases, the private-security culture fuels conflict. Oil companies in the Niger delta have been criticised for arming Nigeria’s Joint Task Force in a bid to secure their assets. The task-force’s combination of police, army and naval personnel, whose houseboats are moored in the delta’s greasy creeks to “tax” passing barges, are accused of human-rights abuses and involvement in the theft of oil.
Things may improve. Mr Rawlins believes that the arrival of his force has forced other security providers to up their game. The new president, Muhammadu Buhari, wants some security contracts cancelled and has told police to stop serving as dogsbodies for political bigwigs and business tycoons. He thinks they should spend more time solving crime.