Tubman Talks with Dr. Ndu Nwokolo
This Tubman Talks is co-sponsored by the Resource Centre for Public Sociology.
Title: Non-State Security Provision and Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria: Rethinking the influence of the Principals on the agents
Bio: Dr Ndubuisi N. Nwokolo is a Managing Partner at Nextier & the Chief Executive of Nextier SPD (Security, Peace and Development), a business unit under Nextier. Nextier is a multi-sectoral, multi-competency International development consulting firm with Offices in Nigeria, Liberia, the USA, and the UK.
He is an Honorary Fellow at the School of Government, University of Birmingham, UK, since 2017 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security at York University Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, in the Political Economy of Natural Resource Conflicts and an advanced MA in Conflict and Sustainable Peace Studies from Katholieke University, Leuven, Belgium. He also has a Master’s Degree in Political Economy and Development Studies from the University of Jos and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Ndu is recognised as a Peacebuilding, Conflict, Security, governance, and International Development Specialist with significant experience and knowledge of Nigeria’s and Africa’s conflict, stabilisation, security, democratic and governance interventions. He consults for International organisations and Development agencies and has been published in academic journals, newspapers, and policy briefs.
Abstract: Security and Policing provisions in Nigeria remain a huge challenge. Today, the country faces security challenges such as terrorism, farmer-herder conflicts, banditry and armed robbery, secession struggles, kidnapping, cult clashes, and group violence across its six geopolitical zones. The multiplicity of these challenges seems to be overwhelming the capacity and ability of state security forces to deal with them. Based on the existing situation, several non-state security outfits have emerged to complement the efforts of state security forces in security and policing provisioning, especially at the local community level.
In many societies, non-state security and policing platforms often emerge when people perceive political authorities and law enforcement institutions as biased, illegitimate or ineffective. In some situations, such a notion leads to the emergence of self-help security actors who apply their kind of justice (Asif & Weenink, 2019). In Nigeria, they consist of vigilante groups, neighbourhood watch, hunter-guard groups, night watch groups, etc. Based on the need for self-help, they function within platforms that perform security and policing-related responsibilities even when such tasks were not designated to them by the country’s constitution. However, some states in Nigeria (federating units) that have established such security outfits on the grounds of augmenting the conventional national security provisions have such outfits backed by state assembly laws but not the constitution.
Narratives of non-state security outfits using on-the-spot corporal punishment such as beating, flogging, and even lynching of suspects are becoming frightening. As these non-state security actors grow in size and numbers due to security challenges, their human rights abuses increase, especially with the absence of national regulations. However, shared understanding and knowledge is that the collaborations between the state security actors/outfits as principals and the non-state security actors/outfits as agents means that the state security outfits oversight and regulate the non-state security outfits even though the constitution has not made such provisions. Based on the Principal-agent theory, it agitates the minds to wonder if a principal with an institutional problem of human rights violations could force its agent to desist from human rights abuse. Drawing on this theory, the current security situation and human rights abuses by state security outfits in the country, making non-state security outfits conform to human rights standards, needs more than constitutional provisions and regulatory processes.