The Private Guard Companies Act (1986) requires that PSCs in Nigeria be registered, licensed and Nigerian-owned, and prohibits the use of firearms by PSCs. However, it also raises issues regarding PSC involvement in complex political struggles and the division of authority between PSCs and public security forces.
The extension of private security, particularly in the oil sector, alongside the privatisation of public forces, offers the possibility for a more professionalised security structure. Military forces are increasingly used to protect oil operations, and are maintained by oil companies. In the oil sector, the privatisation of public security is so extensive that it can be difficult to distinguish public policing from private security. Many significant PSCs in Nigeria have an armed police component seconded to their operations, resulting to some degree in a ‘privatisation’ of the public security forces.
It is in this context that Nigeria’s private security industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years, becoming a major part of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria suffers from extreme inequality, rising crime, corrupt and abusive state security organisations, and conflict in the oil-rich Niger Delta. What are the key issues facing the private security sector in Nigeria? What role do private security companies (PSCs) play and what is their relationship with the public security forces? This report from the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, examines the private security sector in Nigeria.
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