Community Policing as Law Enforcement Option in a Federal State: The Nigerian Experience

Security of lives and property of the populace is the first and primary purpose of government in any human enclave. Therefore, a government that fails in this essential duty not only loses its claim to sovereignty but also loses the legitimacy to preside over the affairs of the State. All over the world, there appears to be a paradigm shift from the conventional or traditional method of social control of crime and other forms of deviant behavior through reliance on the formal law enforcement agencies. There is now increasing resort to community policing globally. In Nigeria, there have been strident calls for the creation of legal platform that allows the use of local vigilantes formally called community police in the country in view of the evolving shades of criminality, banditry, militancy, insurgency and cult-related activities that have stretched the operational capabilities of Nigeria’s instruments of law enforcement to breaking points where the citizens, corporate bodies and investors are now left to negotiate peace on the terms of the criminals. This hopeless situation has made the resort to informal sector security arrangements to be increasingly deployed by communities and local government areas and state grievously tormented by the menace of criminality, even in the absence of legal authorization for its use. Against this background, this paper examines the role of community policing in the security of lives and property and effective law enforcement in Nigeria. It anchors advocacy for the adoption of community policing on the total breakdown of the traditional law enforcement and criminal justice system in the country. The paper found that community policing has always been embraced in the preservation of law and order and is in continuous use in different forms across the country, particularly in the north-eastern and north-western geopolitical zones of Nigeria, where the battle to stamp out Boko Haram insurgency and armed banditry is being intensified, as well as in the Southern part of the country. It is recommended that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 and relevant laws be amended to make provisions for the legalization of community policing as a panacea for peace, security and stability in Nigeria

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Not applicable

The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].