INSECURITY AND PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY Onyigbuo Stephen Uche 1 onyigbuostephenuche@yahoo.com Samuel Jude 2 Ifeanyi Chuke 3 “When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die” Jean-Paul Sartre 4 ABSTRACT This bedrock of this research exercise, which more or less is a desideratum, is the increased focus of people and societies on being protected and adequately insulated from the dire consequences of terrorism, insurgency, armed robbery, and other violent crimes from which organised crime cannot be excluded; this has attracted and retained academic interests in on the issue of security and insecurity, with this discourse focusing on private sector development, and how insecurity punctures the tyre on which it is destined to run. In recent times, the globe has been infested and overwhelmed by an undeniable web of insecurity, and Nigeria, a microcosm of the former, cannot by any means extricate itself from the precipice to which the globe has been pushed by this canker of insecurity, nor can she claim to be insulated from this precarious condition. Domestic and international terrorism, internecine and genocidal conflicts, intrastate and interstate wars, natural and artificial disasters, poverty and other associated economic tsunamis, as well as epidemics and pandemics, all of which are characterised by various degrees of complexity, and associated with varying proportions of proliferation, are factors birthing and fertilising insecurity in different dimensions, across different socio-political precincts, in spheres that negatively affect humanity, and in a manners that can be termed disproportionate. Today, like never before, there is increased interest and focus on issues like cybersecurity, terrorism, warfare, arms proliferation, nuclear proliferation, maritime crimes, and other associated undertakings and occurrences that create an atmosphere of insecurity, but in any meaningful discourse bordering on security and insecurity, four cardinal issues must be addressed, and these are: security for whom? Security of what? Security from what? And who or what is providing the security? Where the positive mechanisms for securing protection is absence, insecurity thrives, and it comes with several far-reaching consequences, and this is the fundamental concern of this exploratory research exercise, which is geared towards x-raying the challenges posed by insecurity on private sector development in Nigeria. The nexus between insecurity and private sector development in Nigeria is explored by this research, and being an exploratory research exercise aimed to facilitate and trigger in-depth and deeply penetrating researches on this subject matter, emphasis was placed on library and internet research, with reliance on secondary data and other secondary sources of information, tailored to identify the cardinal sources of insecurity in Nigeria, as well as the impact on insecurity on the development of the private sector, with identified measures to arrest the cancerous state of insecurity in Nigeria, so as to foster the rebirth and development of the private sector. Efforts would also be made to identify the different segments or facets of security, but the beam of this research would rest on human security. KEYWORDS Security, Insecurity, Private Sector, Private Sector Development, Poverty, Unemployment, Corruption, Governance, Government, Conflict, and Nigeria. 1 . Department of Political Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa, Anambra State Nigeria. 2 . Department of Political Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa, Anambra State Nigeria. 3 . Department of Political Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa, Anambra State Nigeria. 4 . Paul-Sartre, J. (1960). The Devil and the Good Lord, Jean-Paul Sartre”. New York: Random House.