BOUNTY HUNTERS AND PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES CAN STOP TERROR IN NIGERIA

Basil Okoh

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

The Nigerian government, its military and security experts keep playing games with the issues of national security while citizens die, abducted for ransom or are maimed by bandits, terrorists and outlaws who have taken over the open spaces and forests across the nation. The Nigerian military are already too deeply infiltrated and mystified and have lost the capacity to end terrorism in the country. They have lost the momentum to terrorist who wield weapons of increasing lethality and sophistication. Terrorism is now profitable business in Nigeria, both for the terrorists and those on the government side fighting them.

There is an option to solve the banditry and terrorism problem which can be implemented with minimal costs in money and men and little or no combat. The use of bounties to take out the leaders of terror gangs.

If a bounty of $5 million is placed on the head of the outlaw called Bello TURJI for instance, that head will be brought in a platter to claim the bounty within three months of pronouncement, without government having to fire another shot or spend money mobilizing troops and conducting air raids.

If the policy of placing bounties is adopted and the process found to be credible, the terror gangs will mutually wipe one another out to claim the attached rewards. Turji’s own men will kill him for the money. There can be no honour among thieves. Bounties carry an allure which promise big money and make it simple to get.

There is nothing as attractive to the gunman as hunting and killing a criminal for profit. No morality is involved in the business of bounty hunting and no danger can be faced by government troops. Trained gunmen will form themselves into groups to make money from taking out criminals. And society will be better for it.

Every risk is on the hunter looking for money. If you put an attractive bounty on the head of a bandit leader, even his closest lieutenant will kill him to claim the bounty. In the end, the bandits will turn on each other for the lure of money and there will be mutual annihilation in the bushes and forests.

No better example can be cited than the experience of the American Wild West which used bounty hunters to annihilate bandits across the rocks and vast lonely patches of the American West. Bounty hunters chased and destroyed cattle rustlers, bank robbers, murderous outlaws and other criminals in the ungoverned spaces of the Wild West.

Nigerians saw what happened with the whistle-blower policy before it was hurriedly stopped by the authorities out of fear that it was helping to get the big thieves in government.

If $3 million is marked down for each head of a criminal gang of terrorists, the terror industry in Nigeria will end within a year. There are snipers and good gunmen in the forces who will rather take the risk of killing these criminals than remain in the forces. The bandit and terror industry in Nigeria will fold in no time and at little cost to government.

Another aspect of the fight against terror is to license and encourage a private security industry to secure and protect defined areas and public investments. In every country of the West, private security companies are registered and contracted to protect open spaces, public assets and installations and even busy roads and high value neighborhoods. The British Defence Ministry is secured and protected by a private security company.

Private security companies are cheaper, more effective and do not carry the burden of overpaid but indolent staff. They are monitored, accountable and far easier to manage as they can easily be sanctioned or fired altogether when they fail to perform.

Private military contractors also need to be considered for hire to confront and eradicate the menacing terror groups. Terror groups are essentially destructive and asymmetric fighting groups. Establishment armies with learned fighting protocols and rules of engagement find it difficult to engage and defeat these asymmetric groups who do not respect rules and have nothing to lose or protect.

Private military companies are not burdened by the rules which constrain established armies and so are free to fight by the same scorched earth practices of terrorists to defeat their adversaries. Private military companies are becoming weapons in the hands of governments all over the world to cut costs and remove moral burdens while achieving goals that would be otherwise impossible for established armies. They operate without a legal obligation to obey arcane rules or take responsibilities for bad conduct.

Constellis (formerly Blackwater), Dyncorp and Airscan in America, the Wagner group, Convoy, Redut, Patriot, RSB Group in Russia, G4S, AEGIS Defence Services, Pilgrims Group and Control Risks in Britain, Executive Outcomes and Paramount Group in South Africa.

Private Military Companies fight for profit and offer services to governments and militaries and export their expertise or notoriety to foreign entities. Executive Outcomes was on the way to wiping out Boko Haram before the Goodluck Jonathan government was removed. PMC services range from security and protection, including combat, logistics and support, ordnance supplies and demining, intelligence and reconnaissance.

It is evident that the Nigerian government is outdated in its institutional perception of modern security operations and how to secure the country. Our generals appear too reliant on direct kinetic confrontations. However, the prolongation of Nigeria’s security challenge is obviously the result of insider trading and betrayals.

It is alarming that government is spending so much on security in its various forms when it can apply more sense than force and develop a new private security industry that can not only solve its internal security problems but also develop the skills and systems to export these services to other places.

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