Nigeria
VI. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS PMCs engage in offensive military combat operations that
are intended to alter the strategic landscape of a conflict or warfare. Combat Offensive PMCs focus on the tactical environment, offering services at the forefront of combat operations and capabilities, engaging in actual fighting or direct control and command of military units, clandestine warfare, basic and advanced battle handling, and sniper operations. Combat Offensive PMCs are able to deploy a military force in an attempt to help their clients maintain or restore political order, military power, or to change the strategic impact of a war. The successes recorded by the PMCs within the short period of their intervention in the Boko Haram insurgency created a congenial environment for elections to hold in the war ravaged north eastern Nigeria and there is no doubt that had their operations continued, boko haram would have been defeated.
The insurgents have exhibited superior knowledge in their understanding of terrain, and use of information to outsmart security forces on numerous occasions. They employ services of local inhabitants, who provide them with accurate intelligence about government forces. The group
also enjoys the support of sympathizers, who are not necessary taking part in the struggle, but provide information for the insurgents because they have had lost faith in the government (Sadau, 2011).The Nigerian government in addressing the current defence and security challenge should do an overall strategic assessment of the character and scale of the threats and seek to provide capabilities that can, as closely as possible, address the problem. Since the effectiveness and utility of the Nigerian military’s capabilities are inadequate to the threats it faces and the operational environment in which it operates, it is suggested that the Nigerian government should as a matter of military and security expediency engage the services of a PMC to flush out the boko haram insurgents.The Boko Haram insurgency presents a very intricate and precarious conflict which the Nigerian armed force is not trained to confront. The Nigerian army is proficient in conventional warfare and peacekeeping operations and is lacking in the area of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations.
Even the U.S. departments are now dependent on PMCs in their day-to-day operation, from front line logistics to conducting security operations. The general assumption is that PMCs provide services that are competitive, cheaper, and more efficient than government agencies. One advantage that the private sector brings to public wars is capacity. Companies like Kellogg and Brown & Root (KBR), claim that they are capable of supporting the deployment of 50,000 troops anywhere in the world on a short notice (James, 2008).The Nigerian government should therefore leverage on the capacity and potency of PMC by engaging their services to solve the boko haram revolt.
It is suggested that while the military o ption is being exercised to defeat Boko Haram, the derivation reasons of its occurrence should be addressed by the government. As noted earlier, the Boko Haram insurgency is rooted in the failure of government to provide solution to the problems of underdevelopment, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, nepotism, tribalism and corruption. All these problems are currently systemic in Nigeria and have helped to fuel and intensify the conflict.Boko Haram is therefore a direct result of failure of governance and the breakdown of core social values in Nigeria.
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