Policing Nigeria

This book aims to establish whether there is a trust gap between the police and the public in Nigeria, focused to examine the pattern of relationships between both as co-producers of security of lives and property of the people.

Community Policing is a policing system that proactively involves and engages the local communities in policing activities, from crime prevention, crime management to intelligence gathering. It is a policing paradigm that can be implemented differently in different communities, cities and nations as long as the community-centric approach is adopted in its overarching design. This flexibility of Community Policing has made its implementation difficult to comparatively capture since different nations will be doing different things all in the name of Community Policing. This factor has also made it easier in Nigeria for lip service to be paid to implementation when in fact nothing tangible happens in reality. Since the 1999 return to democratic rule; Nigerian Police has been discussing the implementation of Community Policing. Strategy after strategy documents have been produced; yet this form of policing is yet to be operationalised effectively in Nigeria. The void left by this failure has led to agitations for State Police or Local Police by many Nigerians. Meanwhile, the community perception of the police has deteriorated further in the years since 1999 and confidence in the Nigeria Police Force is at an all-time low. The strategies in this book will work effectively regardless of the structure of policing in Nigeria; so, in that sense, the book will always be relevant for policing Nigeria for decades to come.This book is deliberately written in such a way that all rank and file officers can read and understand it. It is a practical book that focuses concisely on how Community Policing can be delivered. The overwhelming focus of this book is on how the Nigerian Police can operationalise Community Policing in as quick a way as possible and with the least resources expended. The book is direct and straight to the point. My goal in this book is to provide a practical template on how Community Policing can be operationalised in Nigeria. After reading this book, the leadership of the police at all levels should be able to see some low hanging fruits of Community Policing implementation, they can adopt swiftly to improve community relations and public perception of the police. To the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force; I hope this book will spark additional creativity to see what is possible and improve the delivery of Community Policing in Nigeria for the benefit of all.

This book offers an historical and contemporary analysis of policing and police-citizen relations in Nigeria, to understand why people co-operate (or don’t) with the police. It examines police legitimacy and the validity of procedural justice theory in a post-colonial African context where corruption, brutality and lack of accountability are not uncommon, to find more refined and alternative answers to the question of why people co-operate (or don’t) with the police. The history of policing in Nigeria is explored first and then procedural justice theory is tested through an extensive, cross-sectional survey of the public. One of the core findings is that citizens’ co-operation with the police is driven less by legitimacy but more by effectiveness considerations and “dull compulsion”, a concept akin to legal cynicism. This study represents one of the first attempts to test and understand “dull compulsion” and its relevance in this context. Overall, it develops the field by illustrating that that there are significant variations between contexts when addressing the influence of perceived procedural justice policing on perceptions of police legitimacy, and it explains the implications for policy makers.

This is a pioneering, multi-empire account of the relationship between the politics of imperial repression and the economic structures of European colonies between the two World Wars. Ranging across colonial Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, Martin Thomas explores the structure of local police forces, their involvement in colonial labour control and the containment of uprisings and dissent. His work sheds new light on broader trends in the direction and intent of colonial state repression. It shows that the management of colonial economies, particularly in crisis conditions, took precedence over individual imperial powers' particular methods of rule in determining the forms and functions of colonial police actions. The politics of colonial labour thus became central to police work, with the depression years marking a watershed not only in local economic conditions but also in the breakdown of the European colonial order more generally.

The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics offers a comprehensive analysis of Nigeria's very rich history and ever changing politics to its readers. It provides a deep understanding of Nigeria's socio-political evolution and experience by covering broad range of political issues and historical eras. The volume encompasses 44 chapters organized thematically into essays covering history, political institutions, civil society, economic and social policy, identity and insecurity, and Nigeria in a globalized world. By identifying many of the classic debates in Nigerian politics, the chapters serve as an authoritative introduction to Africa's most populous country. The chapters are interdisciplinary, introducing readers to classic debates and key research on Nigeria, as well as new methodologies, new data, and a compelling corpus of research questions for the next generation of researchers and readers interested in Africa.