Community Policing: Exploring the Police/Community Relationship for Crime Control in Nigeria

Abstract

The research aims to assess the impact of community policing as overseen by the UK-Department for International Development in Nigeria. This is informed by the increasing rate of crime such as armed robbery, kidnapping, insurgency, corruption and other forms of violence/terrorism in the country. There are perceptions about ‘police/public divide’ in which the members of public are not willing to cooperate with the police in terms of giving useful information that may assist in the prevention and control of crime in Nigeria. This situation has posed a serious threat to the Nigeria police’s ability to strategically position itself in order to perform a range of constitutional roles: protection of live and property as well as maintenance of law and order. Consequently, the UK Department for International Development in conjunction with the Nigerian government introduced community policing policy in 2002/3 to facilitate partnership between the police and community in order to provide safety conditions in the country. However, the prevailing reality suggests that the strategy, after a decade of its policy implementation in Nigeria, was not yielding the desired result because of what seems to be a lack of trust in the police by members of public. The study aims to establish whether or not there is trust gap between the police and members of the public. The available literatures do not adequately address this concern; hence the focus of this research is to examine the pattern of relationships between the police and community as co-producers of security of lives and property in Nigeria. The research adopts an interpretative framework to access the meaning attached to community policing from the perspectives of the stakeholders themselves. The empirical part of the study is qualitative in approach and engages the police and community in focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews in Kogi State of north central Nigeria. The data obtained from field work have been analysed and the key findings in the context of these empirical data have indicated that the desired positive impact of the implementation of community policing policy has not been fulfilled. This is as a result of the relationships gap between the police and community in Nigeria occasioned by the mistrust in the police by the members of public. This gap has a very dangerous implication on the country’s desire to achieve a sense of community safety and security in Nigeria. The risk factors in this regard are that the prevailing family norms, values and the influence of community networks do not allow the community to report cases to the police. Perceptions of corruption by the police and community have negatively affected behaviours and the sense of trust needed to foster relationships among the stakeholders. Key words: Community policing, police/community relationship and Nigeria