This study examine how covid-19 has induced social changes and criminality in Nigeria as a result of economic lockdown, restriction on inter-state movement, closure of international borders, restriction of religious worship, restrictions on all forms of marital rites, ban on all burial and funeral activities, suspension of all educational activities, and social interactions replaced by social distancing. Due to this alteration of the normal human life, and since survival is key, hence the issue of criminality. This paper examined cases of criminality in the country during lockdown, government interventions to mitigate the increase in criminality as a result of the pandemic, implication of covid-19 on fashion, determinant, forms and resistance to social change. The paper is qualitative in nature and relied principally on secondary data to achieved the scope of the study, these includes publications sourced from text books, bulletins, journals, government documents, newspapers and internet. The conflict and conspiracy theory of social change was adopted as the theoretical framework for the study. The findings in this study showed that the government with the aim to mitigate the spread of the pandemic in the country restricted the movement of its citizens with compulsory sit-at-home, thus affecting the normal life of its citizens, government intervention at the federal, state and local level is grossly inadequate to cushion the effect of the epidemic on the vulnerable citizens of the country, several structural factors helped triggered Nigeria’s current economic crises such as poor public health infrastructure, institutional corruption, weak and underdeveloped digital economy, lack of social welfare programme, leadership problem, over-dependent on oil sector of the economy, lack of saving culture and, high debt profile of Nigeria. The paper recommends that government should create an enabling environment to increase the standard of living of its citizens as poverty fuels criminality, the government should not politicalize the distribution of relief materials to victims in the face of emergencies, since the protection of the welfare and well-being of the people is the reason for governance, need for good governance and the rule of law, and government should improve capacity-building strategies for adequate security of life and property in Nigeria.
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Mar 31, 2021
Hee-Su Park 
Open Access