Policing Actors, Plural Processes and Hybridisation: Histories of Everyday Policing Practice in Central Nigeria

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to account for plural and hybrid dynamics of everyday policing practice in selected areas of central Nigeria. I argue that it is the plurality of actors and the plurality of practice that constitute hybrid context of security provisioning. It then follows that the conceptualisation of policing as I have used it and argued from the historical study but also the current state of affairs is a mode of statecraft, a means of governing, situated within a plural landscape, that is shaped by political, economic and social interest. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how plural policing is a product of forms of policing socialisation. The main point that emerges therefore is that violent practices of policing actors are adopted and imbibed not just from a history of the formation and development of state security institutions, but also influenced by wider Nigerian political and social history. State power in the socio-political context I have studied, has always been accompanied or preceded by violence. Routinised violence therefore relates to forms and practices of legitimated violence inherent in policing authorities. Furthermore, the paper argues that alongside these particularly violent forms of policing are the everyday civic policing services, that policing actors render. Policing practice entails normal everyday civic responsible policing and violent everyday practice – all are constitutive of policing practice. In sum, and in conclusion the paper explores how policing practices impact on citizens, particularly as it relates to the processes of policing, the plurality of actors, and the accountability of policing actors.