The Nigerian maritime security forces grapple with a range of grave security threats in Nigerian waters and ports, including organised crime, illegal immigration, large-scale oil theft, piracy, and militancy. At the same time, the Nigerian Navy is not in shape to deal effectively with this complex situation. Years of underfunding combined with high levels of corruption have led to weak operational capacity and capability. Given Nigeria’s strategic importance, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries provide capacity building for the Nigerian maritime forces. They hope that by supplying training and equipment they will help enable Nigeria to meet its own security challenges and prevent them from spiralling out of control.
The United States Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, oversees the Africa Maritime Law Enforcement Partnership (AMLEP) and the Africa Partnership Station (APS). The Nigerian Navy participates in both. Under the auspices of these programmes, Nigerian maritime security personnel take part in training, joint exercises, cooperation, and mentoring in real-world operations together with personnel from the United States and other nations.
Capacity building of corrupt institutions: A donor dilemma
Capacity-building programmes have become a popular way to provide assistance to countries struggling with security challenges that are also relevant to the donor. These programmes are usually limited in scope, focused on building tactical skills and equipping partner countries to handle local security challenges. The motivation for such programmes is often a combination of the donor’s security interests along with development goals. Accordingly, these programmes do not typically focus on promoting good governance, nor do they attempt to reform or overhaul entire security institutions.
Nigeria is a state riddled with systemic corruption, which greatly affects the Armed Forces and the Navy and the maritime security sector overall. Several studies report that Nigerian naval personnel have been involved repeatedly in a wide range of corrupt activities. These range from “turning a blind eye” to criminal acts at sea, to protecting and facilitating such acts, to, in extreme cases, orchestrating them. When corrupt security forces receive capacity building, there is a risk that resources and training may be wasted, diverted, or – in the worst case – exploited for subversion, crime, or terrorism. However, if these forces are left to themselves and do not receive assistance, they may remain weak, unfit, and unable to combat transnational threats in their operating area. This dilemma might lead to expectations that capacity-building programmes would also address corruption issues within the institutions they engage. But this is seldom the case.
Hands-on training but hands-off corruption
Our study aims to understand how AMLEP and APS deal with corruption, including whether and how anti-corruption measures are incorporated into the programmes. We carried out a literature review and a total of 18 interviews in 2017 and 2018, the majority of them in Nigeria. Findings suggest that AFRICOM and its partners are well aware that corruption is a debilitating problem for maritime security institutions in Nigeria. Still, none of the programmes contain explicit anti-corruption measures designed to reduce corrupt practices in the maritime security sector. Even more troublingly, none of the programmes have measures to safeguard against the risk that training provided to institutions within corrupt societies may do more harm than good by professionalising and otherwise bolstering corrupt actors.
According to the interviews, one reason for this omission is that the programmes mainly provide hands-on, operational skills-based training, which is not considered well suited to addressing corruption. Another reason is the political sensitivity of corruption issues.
AFRICOM has, however, introduced measures to prevent waste and diversion of its programme funding as a result of Nigerian corruption. Strict anti-corruption measures have been built into the design and implementation of AFRICOM programmes to limit theopportunities for corruption related to the project funds. In particular, corruption-proof procurement processes are used, and no financial support is given directly to the organisations that receive training.
In short, the countries that supply military aid under the AMLEP and APS umbrellas are well aware of the prevalence of corruption throughout state structures in Nigeria. Still, these programmes largely ignore corruption as they carry out capacity building. Apparently they assume that these programmes can help Nigerian maritime security institutions function better, even though corruption remains rampant within these very institutions.
Where to start?
We argue that the problem of corruption should be seen as closely linked to the weak performance of security institutions, and that capacity-building efforts therefore should address corruption directly. Capacity-building programmes are not designed to reform security institutions. However, the limited ambitions of such programmes do not absolve these donors of responsibility for potentially counter-productive outcomes. If success is measured in the medium to long term, building partner capacity should include assisting partners to reduce corruption within security institutions. At the very least, donors should take steps to ensure that training and capacity building do not cause harm due to corruption.
Toward this end, we offer six recommendations:
- Create awareness of the potential impact of corruption on capacity building
- Avoid compartmentalising “security” and “corruption” into two unrelated issues
- Assess corruption risks and develop anti-corruption plans
- Provide pre-deployment training to donor staff
- Provide integrated anti-corruption training to partners
- Monitor the assistance and safeguard against abuse
