COMMUNITY
POLICING
IN
NIGERIA
RATIONALE, PRINCIPLES, and PRACTICE
Emmanuel C. Onyeozili
Biko Agozino
Augustine Agu
Patrick Ibe
“In this era of Covid-19, enlightened policing is of special urgency.
The authors of Community Policing in Nigeria provide us invaluable guidelines to attain this.”
—Gloria Emeagwali, Central Connecticut State University
“Community Policing in Nigeria is well timed, especially when Nigeria is descending into a state of security failure. Not only do the
authors trace the history of policing in Nigeria, they offer comprehensive strategies for community policing that would help Nigeria
maintain peace and order, as well as prevent and apprehend the
various kinds of criminal elements that menace the streets of the
country. Most important, the book demonstrates that acceptable
policing practices were bracketed and ubiquitously practiced in
regions of Nigeria before the European invasion and the subsequent introduction of a state militarized police system. This book
is a must-read for policy-makers and Nigeria’s educational sectors.”
—Ihekwoaba Declan Onwudiwe, Texas Southern University
Emmanuel C. Onyeozili is professor of criminology and criminal
justice at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore
Biko Agozino is professor of sociology and Africana studies at
Virginia Tech
Augustine Agu is a retired senior policy officer at UNICEF
Patrick Ibe is professor and chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Albany State University
ISBN 9781949373585
90000 >
9 781949 373585
Community Policing in Nigeria
Advance Praise for Community Policing in Nigeria
The authors of this book have sliced through the unnecessary and confusing web of halftruths woven around the topic of community policing in Nigeria. This very accessible work
has presented the reader and, hopefully, the political class in Nigeria with a rich menu of
options. The Nigerian public, the police force itself, and the political class can no longer
continue to wallow in confusion over the clear options for community policy. We owe the
authors gratitude for providing us with a road map for the implementation of community
policing in Nigeria.
— Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Diocese of Sokoto
This book serves as an intellectual path finder on the most auspicious strategy for engaging
and stemming the tide of insecurity in Nigeria. Despite the profundity of writings on insecurity in Nigeria, few academic contributions have been made on how to strengthen and
expand the scope of security architecture to contain the scourge of insecurity. This lacuna
has now been effectively filled.
—Aloysius-Michaels Okolie, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
In this era of Covid-19, enlightened policing is of special urgency. The authors of Community
Policing in Nigeria provide us invaluable guidelines to attain this.’
—Gloria Emeagwali, Central Connecticut State University
Community Policing in Nigeria is quite timely going by the debates in the country over its
desirability or not. Nigeria is currently plagued by innumerable security threats, and the
authors of this volume have contributed to the debate through various perspectives. Highly
recommended for security experts, legislators at the National and State Assemblies, scholars,
and students of security studies.
—Bernard Steiner Ifekwe, University of Uyo, Nigeria
“African Lives Matter!” is a rallying cry for the 21st century. The roots of modern policing lie
in white supremacy, colonial subjugation, and slavery. It is high time that we challenge persistent colonial practices and move to an era of Ubuntu, decolonial feminist, and anti-racist
and anti-colonial reimagining of public safety throughout the African continent and across
the globe, that humanizes our pan-African citizenry. I congratulate the authors of this book
for the timely and African-centric contribution calling for heightened political consciousness
among practitioners and a rethinking of what is too often taken for granted.
—Assata Zerai, University of New Mexico
This book is a timely intervention into the subject of community policing in Nigeria. The authors are grounded in sound theoretical, empirical, and comparative analyses, and they offer
relevant policy recommendations for community policing that take into account indigenous
experiences with community policing instead of adopting a Eurocentric approach. It is highly
useful for students, scholars, and policy makers in Nigeria and other African countries.
—Jeremiah Dibua, Morgan State University
This book engages rigorously with the genealogy and contemporary contours of community
policing in Nigeria. It is a timely intervention at a time of tremendous security problems and
overdue return to grassroots-led policing structures. The authors’ analysis is historically
sound, theoretically engaging, and empirically nuanced. I warmly recommend this book to
scholars, policymakers, and students of policing.
—Temitope B. Oriola, President, Canadian Association of African Studies
The authors of this book remind us that community self-policing was the order of rule
enforcement and the guardian of citizen security in pre-colonial Nigeria. This fact provides
the groundwork for a promising community–police partnership against the enduring threats
of crime in post-colonial Nigeria. The book is essential reading for academics, policymakers,
and practitioners who care about governance in Nigeria and in Africa.
—Anita Kalunta-Crumpton, Texas Southern University
Community Policing in Nigeria takes readers on a fascinating journey into the history of
policing and the critical interventionist rationale for community policing as a panacea for
the security problem in Nigeria. This book is essential reading for all interested in addressing
Nigeria’s policing problematics.
—Chima J. Korieh, Marquette University
This compellingly original and timely book inveighs authoritatively into Nigeria’s ongoing
quest for, and debate over, appropriate modalities for policing and forging peace—in a country plagued by criminality, insecurity, group conflict, and a broken police system. Critiquing
existing theories and manuals on policing as overly steeped in the ethos of punishment
and coercion rather than in the idiom of crime prevention through communal care and
watchfulness, Community Policing in Nigeria is grounded in a refreshingly African theoretical
perspective on peacemaking. Yet this is not just a book of theories and academic arguments.
It also offers practical, actionable insights and prescriptions that policymakers, security professionals, and stakeholders will find invaluable. What’s more, the ideas advanced here can be
extrapolated to other African countries grappling with similar challenges of escalating crime
and flawed policing.
—Moses Ochonu, Vanderbilt University
Community Policing in Nigeria is well timed, especially when Nigeria is descending into a
state of security failure. Not only do the authors trace the history of policing in Nigeria, they
offer comprehensive strategies for community policing that would help Nigeria maintain
peace and order, as well as prevent and apprehend the various kinds of criminal elements
that menace the streets of the country. Most important, the book demonstrates that acceptable policing practices were bracketed and ubiquitously practiced in regions of Nigeria
before the European invasion and the subsequent introduction of a state militarized police
system. This book is a must-read for policy-makers and Nigeria’s educational sectors.
—Ihekwoaba Declan Onwudiwe, Texas Southern University
Community Policing in Nigeria represents a bold, exceptional, and refreshing effort by
leading Nigerian scholars and professionals to address the major global and perennial
security problem of manipulated and flawed policing systems—until now considered out of
bounds to all, except the very government bureaucracies that created the problem in the first
place. In a major creative departure from the norm, the authors provide scientific theoretical background while identifying a number of community policing models world-wide as
appropriate options for governments and communities, especially in the developing world,
including Nigeria, to consider, adapt, adopt, and apply as effective community-policing systems to address the prevailing chronic security problem. The authors leave readers with the
sobering, thought-provoking message of calling on governments in the developing world to
cease policing communities in a police state and instead encourage and support communities to police themselves in a democracy. This book is strongly recommended for all senior
civil servants and policy-makers; senior security personnel; development and humanitarian
practitioners; aid agencies and donors; political organizations and parties; and academia and
research institutions.
—David S. Bassiouni, Chairman and CEO, The Bassiouni Group, and former Deputy
Director, UNICEF
The Nigeria Police Force announced in 2019 its adoption of community policing and the
establishment of structures for its implementation. And yet the principles and practices of
community policing are not adequately understood by many politicians and community leaders in Nigeria, often equating it with ethnic and religious militias and vigilantes. Some state
governments have established vigilante groups into which only indigenes are enlisted rather
than community residents, making them unrepresentative of the population. The publication of Community Policing in Nigeria is very timely for it explains the historical evolution of
western-type police forces in the country during colonial rule and discusses the principles
and practices embodied in community policing. I recommend this book to the police and other law enforcement officials, policy-makers, politicians, researchers, and students interested
in improved police services in the country.
—Etannibi Alemika, University of Jos, Nigeria
This book is well timed as the post-George Floyd world considers the increasing militarization and brutality of police forces. Many see police in the US and UK, for example, as ridden
with an institutionalized racism dating back to colonial times. Countries where these tactics
were first fine-tuned include Nigeria and Northern Ireland. The transition to a more civil
policing in Nigeria provides a laboratory for social scientists to assess whether and how
community policing can come to fruition in post-colonial societies. Building on existing
scholarship on the Nigerian police, this erudite book takes the debates forward in a compelling and practical way.
—Colin Sumner, University of Sheffield
Community Policing in Nigeria
Rationale, Principles, and Practice
Emmanuel C. Onyeozili, Biko Agozino,
Augustine Agu, and Patrick Ibe
B
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This book was peer-reviewed prior to publication by Virginia Tech
Publishing.
Copyright © 2021 Emmanuel C. Onyeozili, Biko Agozino, Augustine Agu, and
Patrick Ibe
First published in the US in 2021 by Virginia Tech Publishing
First published in Nigeria in 2021 by Fourth Dimension Publishing
Virginia Tech Publishing
University Libraries at Virginia Tech
560 Drillfield Drive
Blacksburg, VA 24061
USA
Fourth Dimension Publishing Company, Ltd.
New Haven Enugu
Enugu State
Nigeria
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license,
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Onyeozili, Emmanuel C. | Agozino, Biko. | Agu, Augustine. | Ibe,
Patrick
Title: Community policing in Nigeria: Rationale, Principles, and Practice |
Emmanuel C. Onyeozili, Biko Agozino, Augustine Agu, Patrick Ibe.
Description: Blacksburg, VA : Virginia Tech Publishing, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-949373-59-2 (PDF) | ISBN: 978-1-949373-60-8
(epub) | ISBN: 978-1-949373-58-5 (pbk) | DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/
community-policing-nigeria
Subjects: BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology. | SOCIAL SCIENCE /
Ethnic Studies / African Studies. | HISTORY / Africa / West.
Front cover illustration: Anubis weighing the heart of Ani, from papyrus of
Ani, c. 1250 BCE. Papyrus in the British Museum. Public domain photo.
Contents
ix
Foreword by Ifi Amadiume
xi
Foreword by Kimani Nehusi
xiii
Introduction
1. The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
2. History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nige-
xv
1
23
ria
3. Developing Effective Community-Policing Pro-
67
grams
4. Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
89
5. Community Policing Implementation Issues
115
Conclusion
133
References
141
About the Authors
157
We dedicate this book to the avatar, Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo
(August 1939–February 2020), who dedicated fifty years of his life to
scholar-activism and to intellectual and moral leadership as a prolific author, indigenous publisher, and political activist who tirelessly
offered courageous and innovative critiques of the misrule of Africa
by the phantom bourgeoisie and maintained a historically specific
radical blueprint for the advancement of African societies.
| ix
Foreword by Ifi Amadiume
You might recall the famous line from the poet Maya Angelou’s
indictment of the false representation of black people by their
oppressors, abusers and colonizers as “twisted lies” (Angelou, 1978).
This book sets the facts straight by tracing the history of the
current problems of policing that suppress and punish blacks and
minorities—but defend and protect whites and the powerful—the
contradictions of a screwed-up system with militaristic origins,
locked in a mindset in an upside-down mandate where the arrow
continues to point downward against the people, rather than
upward at the crimes of the powers that be.
The idea presented here of “democracy of the masses” seems
something obvious as a counterforce/weight to abusive power
rather than that of those recommending a police state and an intrusion on the hard earned right to privacy.
The suggestion of representative community committees with
social awareness and working with various professional experts
seems a popular alternative. It is a sensible move to re-educate and
socialize the police force, policing, and security systems away from
mean punishing.
It is a social awareness that gives presence, voice, and power to
“caste-class-gender” and oppressed groups—what in struggle and
response to ethnic patriarchy, capitalist patriarchal oppression, and
violent abuses we see as presence and power in numbers.
| xi
Foreword by Kimani Nehusi
In locating policing firmly within the Afrikan tradition, from earliest
antiquity to the present, this book returns policing to the people in
Afrikan communities. While its focus is on policing within Nigeria,
theoretical insights and practical examples, these latter both positive and negative, from around the world are also deployed to illuminate a firm grasp of the evolution of police and policing from
colonial times in what is now Nigeria.
The resulting text therefore makes a necessary and radical break
with colonial and neocolonial policing in which the police are usually little more—if anything more—than an occupying force organized by Europeans who oppresses the mass of the people on behalf
of these foreign masters and their local accomplices, who are junior
partners in the exploitation of Afrika.
An honest and rigorous examination of the relevant facts instructs
an in-depth understanding of the issues and permits the emergence
of imaginative and ground-breaking solutions in the form of bold
identification and recommendations of best practices that do not
shrink from imagining a greatly transformed future in which policing will be of, by, and for the people in the necessarily updated tradition of the people.
The entirely worthwhile objective is the return of policing from
authoritarianism to democracy, from elitist control to people’s control, and the full participation in a twenty-first century environment.
Comprehensive and aware, informative and imaginative, authoritative and solution-oriented, this book is a most important intervention that demonstrates scholarship in the service of the people
and offers a model for the study and transformation of the police
and other institutions in colonized countries that are serious about
decolonization and real development.
| xiii
Introduction
This book is an intervention by a group of scholars who came
together, voluntarily and without any funding, to address the gaps in
knowledge existing in policy debates and proposals about the need
to tackle the escalating insecurity in Nigeria through community
policing. The book examines models of community policing around
the world and points out best practices and flawed practices that
may serve as guides for Nigeria and the rest of Africa. The book is
theoretically informed and evidence based as a contribution to the
policy debates with room for other scholars to join the debates and
contribute ideas that may help to make African communities safer,
more prosperous, and wiser.
In this introduction1 we paint the large picture with broad
strokes. It is followed by chapter 1, a theoretical chapter that
explores ideas about the origin of professional police organizations
and the circumstances that led to the populist demands for community policing around the world. Discourse on policing around the
world and especially in Africa tends to avoid theoretical issues and
focus almost exclusively on administrative issues. We depart from
the technocratic approach by providing a theoretical background
before the diuscussion of the organizational issues in line with the
call by Azikiwe for Renascent Africa to take the scientific method
seriously in all aspects of social organization (Azikiwe, 1937).
The theoretical chapter is followed by a historiography of policing
in Nigeria with lessons for the rest of Africa. History shows that
modern policing was introduced into Africa by colonizers who followed the Weberian rational ideal bureaucratic model by establishing training, formal qualifications, hierarchies, uniforms, and
written rules in order to facilitate command and control. Some
1. Parts of the Introduction first appeared in Africa Is a Country, 4 May 2021.
https://africasacountry.com/2021/05/beyond-violence-and-militarism
| xv
readers may be surprised to learn that even after the Northern Protectorate and the Southern Protectorate were amalgamated with
the colony of Lagos in 1914 to form what is Nigeria, the Northern
region continued to have its own police force until 1930 when the
police force was amalgamated to form one centrist Nigerian Police
Force.
All that bureaucratization and centralization did not equip the
police to prevent or stop (without a single genocidist arrested; intellectuals, the police and the military actually facilitated) the mass
killings of Easterners throughout the country and especially in the
Middle Belt region before the country descended into a bloody civil
war that cost an estimated 3.1 million lives of mostly Easterners in
thirty months. At the end of the war in 1970, the Nigerian Police
Force was seen as one of the organs that could help to maintain
unity without being under the control of regional leaders who could
use them to attack perceived enemies. Instead, however, the dictatorial military regimes in the country and their civilian counterparts set the track record of deploying corrupt police officers to
attack protesting students and striking workers without protecting
the communities under attack by criminal elements.
Chapter 3 surveys issues involved in the development of effective
community policing programs and outlines the essential elements
of community policing. This is followed by chapter 4, which focuses
on models of community policing from around the world. We
explore models, best practices, and worst practices of community
policing in other parts of the world that are based on indigenous
African knowledge systems from which Nigerians and Africans
could learn. We warn against the adoption of what Stan Cohen dismissed as “made-for-export” models that remain problematic in
industrialized countries but are attractive to policymakers in Africa
who seek foreign aid in the forms of police training and equipment
from countries where the citizens are now demanding the abolition
of the abusive police force and enacting police reforms in an effort
to shift resources to democratic community organizations.
xvi | Introduction
Chapter 5 covers the implementation issues associated with community policing with an emphasis on the ability of the community
to solve problems that arise in the community. We outline a sample
action plan for the implementation of community policing and raise
concerns about the receptivity of the formal police organization to
innovations that empower the community. Will the governments
in Africa be committed to the deepening of democracy by rolling
back the legacies of colonialism? And, just as important, will they
be committed to empowering communities to be self-governing in
keeping with principles of interconnectivity, infinity, self-similarity, recursion, fractal nonlineal geometry, fractional dimensions, or
African Fractals that Africans are known to deploy in their designs
more than Europeans who prefer Cartesian designs that are easier
to dominate, according to Ron Englash (1999) and to Andul Bangura
(2012)?
In conclusion, the book differentiates between processes of policing communities in a police state and communities policing themselves in a democracy. We recommend a new approach to
community policing in Africa with emphasis on decolonization and
the abolition of repressive colonial laws, the erasure of the colonial
boundaries, and the restructuration of African communities into the
United Republic of African States or the Peoples Republic of Africa.
The withering away of the genocidal colonial states imposed on
Africa would help to silence the guns across Africa and empower our
communities to organize community policing across the ridiculous
colonial boundaries that our people transgress on a daily basis in
search of their livelihood.
The book defines community policing as the concern of all citizens, since the word police, is derived from polis, a Greek word that
means citizens. Given that the modern police force was established
for the repressive control of enslaved Africans, the colonized, the
disenfranchised, women, and poor workers by the British authorities, our research has convinced us that policing is a task that should
go beyond the police force and involve all citizens who say something when they see something going wrong. We are aware of the
Introduction | xvii
fact that even in industrialized countries with modern technologies of surveillance, the police only manage to solve about 5 percent of crimes by themselves, while more than 90 percent of crimes
are solved because of the alertness of citizens who are willing to
come forward as witnesses. This fact is one of the reasons why community policing is increasingly popular around the world while the
war-like police force model is declining in popularity because of its
propensity toward the abusive use of force without guaranteeing
public safety.
In the case of Nigeria, the escalation of terrorist violence by Boko
Haram and cattle herders especially in the Northern parts of the
country resulted in a war of attrition that forced some local hunters
to volunteer to assist the military in fighting the terrorists and in
looking for kidnapped truckloads of school girls being used as sex
slaves in addition to abuses by security forces in detentions camps
as reported by Amnesty International. That is different from what
we call community policing because the war on terrorism has gone
beyond the task of policing to denote a military mission or warfare, pure and simple. However, the spreading threat of attacks from
suspected cattle herders who conflict with farmers over access to
grazing land and watering areas and the increased risk of rape, ritual
murder, and kidnapping for ransom across the country have combined to raise the cry for the need for community policing in the
country.
We are aware that community policing would not be able to solve
all these problems and so there is also a need for the political and
economic will to modernize cattle rearing in Nigeria by establishing
ranches and requiring that feed and water should be taken to the
herds instead of forcing the poor herders who have thankfully provided meat to feed the nation for more than a hundred years to continue clashing with the heroic farmers who have fed us with farm
crops without any subsidies from the government.
The states of South West Nigeria have passed legislations to
authorize Amotekun (or the Leopard) as the name for their version
of community policing. The South Eastern states have agreed to
xviii | Introduction
form Ebube Agu (awe of the lion) armed security agents to work
with the police as the alternative to community policing, but without addressing the extrajudicial killings of hundreds of unarmed
youths who were labeled terrorists because they belong to an association called the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). IPOB demands
a referendum on the independence of Biafra and has launched its
own Eastern Security Network but denied responsibility for attacks
against security agents in the Eastern region. In the Northern parts
of the country, there are armed militants clashing with communities
to prevent cattle rustling and to deter kidnapping or massacres,
but they are not declared terrorist groups, only the Boko Haram
is known to be a terrorist group in the region. In the South South
geopolitical zone, there are Niger Delta militants seeking more control over the resources in the region but the Nigerian government
under President Yar’Adua decided to make peace with them through
an amnesty program that gave them jobs in return for the promise
to end armed attacks against oil workers and oil installations.
Our book considers favorably the peacemaking approaches of our
ancestors who had no police force and no prisons but managed to
achieve greater security for their lives and properties despite the
terrorist raids on our communities by European agents for people to
be kidnapped and enslaved for four hundred years. We note that the
Nigerian Police Force was established as an army of occupation by
the colonizers and therefore, that model of policing remains problematic for postcolonial African societies.
However, we also point out lessons from South Africa where the
Inkatha Freedom Party clashed with African National Congress supporters in a black-on-black violence orchestrated by the apartheid
regime, and in the Sudan where the Janjaweed militia terrorized the
people and where the new republic of South Sudan soon descended
into armed conflict between factions of the elites. Additionally,
there is Somalia where Al Shabab terrorists specialize in massacring
Africans, Liberia where a senseless civil war between armed thugs
cost many lives, Libya where Maumer Gadhafi was assassinated with
the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the country
Introduction | xix
was made ungovernable as terrorists took over, or the Congo where
armed warlords have held the people hostage over the control of the
rare earth minerals that power the smart technologies of the world.
Not to be forgotten is the Central African Republic where religious sectarianism caused mayhem as sects attacked anyone suspected of belonging to another sect, and Rwanda where hatred was
spread on the mass media to target any group of people the way that
hate speech was used to mobilize Nigerians against innocent citizens from the former Eastern and Midwestern regions, especially
Igbo men, women, and children in a genocidal rage but without any
suspects arrested by the police. Horace Campbell (2013) shows that
NATO members often act as enablers of these insecurity crises.
All these prove that wherever the people are armed as militias in
response to heightened insecurity, they quickly descend into mass
violence as one vigilante group clashed with another in defense
of war lords. We caution against turning African communities into
armed vigilante societies because every time Africans are armed,
they tend to use those weapons against fellow Africans just as the
arming of Europeans resulted in the first and second imperialist
tribal wars between Germany and the world over which group of
imperialists would have more colonies in Africa, resulting in the
deaths of seventy million people, mostly poor Europeans.
We conclude by calling on African communities to reintroduce
education for all on civic engagement and the cultivation of love
in the community because without this, the epidemics of rape and
violence against women and children in Africa could not be ended
by an armed militia or vigilante group, for instance. In Nigeria,
no police officer or Boko Haram terrorist has ever been punished
adequately for crimes against the masses. Rather, they are often
released after allegedly “repenting” and some are reportedly integrated into the police and military forces. Amnesty International has
reported widespread abuses of children by both government forces
and by Boko Haram suspects that may explain some of the releases
of suspects from unlawful detention by the government, but the
xx | Introduction
reintegration process is said to lack transparency, food and medicine are inadequate, and schools are not provided for the children.
In the United States with heavily armed police and military officers and high technologies of surveillance equipment, hundreds
of thousands of rape allegations and cases of kidnappings arise
every year, but there is very little the authorities can do about
them. According to FBI statistics, for every one thousand rape cases
reported to the police in the United States, only five suspects are
found guilty, leading to the conclusion that prevention is better than
conviction in the case of rape (US Department of Justice, 2020).
Also, given the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality
around the world, we call on all Africans to recognize the lives
being wasted with impunity by the police. At the very least, when
the police and the military kill unarmed civilians, the government
should be sued for reparative justice and should be forced by the
courts to pay the families whether or not the officers who conducted the extrajudicial killings are tried and convicted for homicide.
Finally, we call for the training of members of the community on
how to use their cell phone videos and cameras to record evidence
of crimes and how to set up community blog sites or electronic
newspapers where tips on crime can be anonymously updated.
Assata Zerai has recommended that information technology access
and skills development by African women could help to improve
people-oriented governance in Africa (Zerai, 2019). We recommend
that houses and streets in the community should be equipped with
closed-circuit television cameras powered by solar energy or by
wind-power generators when there is no electricity supply from the
grid, as is usually the case in Nigeria where we never always expect
power.
Commercial establishments in the United States and major streets
in the United Kingdom already have CCTV cameras for surveillance
despite privacy concerns by many. However, community watchfulness and surveillance, whether relying on information technologies
or relying on human eyes and ears or both, should be controlled by
Introduction | xxi
the community instead of being used by the government to create
a police state that spies on the people and erodes privacy, self-governance, and civil liberties or abuses human rights. If a household sets up a camera to catch a babysitter abusing a child or to
catch the neighbors throwing rubbish over their fence, they may
resolve the issue privately without involving the police. Jefferson
(2020) insists that even though digital technologies are used in the
United States to control the people, with more than one hundred
million names in crime databases, civil rights groups and the Black
Lives Matter movement activists also rely partly on the same digital
technologies to hold law enforcement officials accountable. Investigations should be handled by community committees with the
emphasis on peacemaking and healing. For instance, a widow could
record the destruction of her farm and send the video to community organizations for mediation and possible reparations from
the suspected offender without involving the police. Gascon and
Roussell (2019) warn against the use of community police advisory
boards to extend the coercive powers of the police into the community without empowering the community to hold abusive officers accountable. We are also aware of the warning by Michael Kwet
(2018) that social media platforms are serving as surveillance tools
for the imperialist states and so, by implication, community policing
efforts in the global south should not be based exclusively on centralized social media apps controlled by imperialist countries but
more on “people’s technology” directly controlled by the communities.
Above all, we need to avoid the enthronement of toxic masculinity
in African communities through the training and arming of vigilante
young men with crude weapons, fast cars, and sophisticated
weapons by politicians who turn them loose after being elected into
office and allow them to run wild, intimidating, robbing, and looting
from the suffering masses.
Rather, we recommend that we should learn from women and
male youth who have a heroic tradition of nonviolently resisting
injustice (Nwankwor and Nkereuwem, 2020). As Chinua Achebe sugxxii | Introduction
gested and Desmond Tutu agreed, we need to promote our indigenous Africana philosophy of tolerance through Mbari or Ubuntu in
recognition that we are brothers and sisters who inherited what
Martin Luther King Jr. called the “world house” that we should share
in a beloved community or fight and burn it down with prejudice
(Achebe, 2012; Tutu and Tutu, 2014; King, 1967).
We recommend that all community policing committees must
be made up of equal numbers of men and women with significant
representation of delegates from organized labor, civil society, and
women. They should serve primarily as community peacemaking
committees by focusing on prevention instead of obsessing about
the impossible commodity fetishism of calibrating punishment to fit
the cost of crime. Let us remove the hand of the monkey from the
soup before it turns into the hand of a human. Let us pursue the
black goat in the daylight before nightfall.
Introduction | xxiii
1. The Idea/Theory of
Community Policing
What Is Community Policing Theory?
With the mounting insecurity in Nigeria and the brutal militaristic
policing of the country, Nigerians have been calling for the introduction of community policing to help to secure rights, lives, and
property.1 The authors responded to the public clamour for justice
by collaborating on this book project with a view to offer a theoretical framework and a comparative analysis of best and worst
practices of community policing that Nigeria and Africa could learn
from. This section of the book aims at contributing to the theorization of the practical concerns of community policing echoed by
the #BlackLivesMatter movement around the world. These extracts
focus on the theoretical background that could help to inform
debates about police brutality and insecurity worldwide with
insights from African-centered epistemologies in dialogue with theories from the North. With few exceptions, such discussions focus
on the geopolitical North and the few that extend the focus to Africa
simply focus on Northern authors, goals, methods, and fears rather
than on African interests.
Theory is not magic that only a few people can do but something
that every community engages in when they tell stories about their
observations of patterns and tendencies that lead to conclusions
about the order of things and the expectations of things to come or
things to do to change current conditions for the better. Community policing is the practice designed to promote safety and well-
1. The first section of this chapter is excerpted from “What is Community Policing Theory?” Antipode Online, 13 January 2021. https://antipodeonline.org/2021/01/13/community-policing-theory/
| 1
being by making peace and by preventing wrongdoing that is found
in every community. Being practical, discretionary, and authoritarian, policing tends to be lacking in theory that is systematic and
experimental through trial and error but habitually keeps doing the
same things and conservatively hopes for the same results. This lack
of theory in the practice of policing may be part of the reasons why
it is not as effective as people desire in a world that is fast changing that requires thinking outside the box. The lack of theory in this
area of life may be as a result of the nature of the problem of crime
and social order as things that are not always predictable.
Criminology has many theories of what causes crime and how
society responds to criminal behavior but the field of criminal justice science notoriously neglects theory construction while concentrating on administrative strategies of law enforcement, court
trials, and corrections. The few theories of criminal justice administration include the precolonial black Africa theory of very peaceful
and orderly societies with no need for professional police forces or
prisons and with an emphasis on peacemaking, according to Cheikh
Anta Diop (1987). Marxist theory recognizes law enforcement as the
arm of government that protects the interests of rich people based
on their fear that poor people will try and overthrow them and
steal their wealth. Even though poor people are overwhelmingly law
abiding worldwide, they are convicted and imprisoned even when
they are innocent, as Reiman and Leighton (2009) theorized. On the
other hand, the rich and powerful people and companies get away
with many crimes, especially during the hundreds of years of the
kidnapping and enslavement of millions of Africans, during colonialism, during postcolonial genocide, and during apartheid. The
majority of the law-abiding masses struggled to bring those systems of criminal injustice oppression to an end (against slavery, sexism, imperialism, Nazism, Jim Crowism, and apartheid) in order to
improve public safety with the aim to abolish oppressive laws and
make it possible for all to contribute to their communities according to their abilities and give to all according to their needs. Even
without having a police force, a court of law, and prisons, indigenous
2 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
communities without oppression were more humane and safer than
oppressive and exploitative police states because wherever there
is crime and social injustice, the people will struggle to end it and
enthrone social justice for the benefit of all.
The classic work by Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the
Earth (1963), indicates that African people were more scared
of juju (bad spiritual powers) than they were of the colonial police
and the military. Thus, if someone dreamt of sleeping with another
man’s wife, he would go and apologize to the husband and pay a fine
after waking up to avoid being messed up by the ancestral spirits.
Fanon also reported that colonial European police officers institutionalized violence as law and order by torturing Africans; but they
also went mad and went home to torture their own wives and children too while the tortured Africans went insane and sometimes ran
down the streets screaming that they wanted to kill someone with a
kitchen knife.
Similarly, Walter Rodney reported in How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa (1972) that peace-loving Igbo women declared a nonviolent
war against the colonial authorities when they used the oppressive
system of “double squeeze” to fix higher prices for imported manufactures like khaki or zinc and also fix lower prices for things like
palm oil in 1929. The women won the right not to be taxed and not
to have colonial “warrant chiefs” imposed on the indigenous democratic system. The men were forced to pay higher taxes and still the
communities tasked themselves to build schools and clinics without
much support from the colonizers. Having been forced to work for
wages to earn money for taxes and levies, Rodney also recognized
the sit-down strike by Nigerian coal miners who demanded to be
paid living wages but who were massacred in Enugu in 1949. Against
propaganda that regarded the 1967–1970 genocide against the Igbo
in Biafra as the result of tribal conflict for which no genocidist was
arrested or tried and no apology or reparations offered, Rodney
observed that prior to colonization, the neighbors of the Igbo never
ganged up against them to commit genocide perhaps because there
is no African tribe known as Shell BP or the Labour Party governThe Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 3
ment of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union that orchestrated
the genocide. He concluded that under colonialism (and neocolonialism by extension), the maintenance of law and order amounts to
the maintenance of conditions favorable to exploitation. In an earlier book, The Groundings with My Brothers (1969), Rodney recognized the Igbo as among the African nations that practiced direct
democracy without kings and queens, and he called on researchers
to study this system of government to draw out good lessons. The
military dictatorship of Olusegun Obasanjo tried to undermine this
indigenous democratic system by imposing “traditional rulers” on
the republican Igbo in 1976 despite the resounding victory won by
Igbo women against such colonial “warrant chiefs” in 1929, according to Adiele Afigbo in The Warrant Chiefs (1972).
The classic work by Stuart Hall and colleagues, Policing the Crisis (1978), examined the discriminatory ways that the police targeted
people of African descent in the United Kingdom as if they were an
internal colony to be controlled by force rather than by consent in a
democracy. Drawing lessons from the policing of enslaved Africans
and from apartheid South Africa, the book demonstrated that when
authoritarian populism is allowed to target a group of people for
repression, it is the entire society that suffers as a consequence.
In other words, poor white people in the United Kingdom and the
United States also suffered from the use of the police to oppress
poor black people and it would be in the interest of all to elect governments that are accountable to the poor so that policies would
be put in place to end oppression and exploitation. Otherwise, the
police would continue to be known as what Rastafarians call
oppressive “Babylon” forces.
A key problem with the Marxist theory of criminal justice administration is that it appears to promise too much by implying that it
is possible to allow the law and even the state to wither away, as
Lenin put it following Friedrich Engels, so that communities can
move from class rule to the administration of things in line with
the principles of needs and capacities. Angela Davis argues that it
is not utopian to imagine a more humane future with obsolescence
4 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
of prisons, racism, sexism, exploitation, war, and imperialism, much
like the way that indigenous societies lived for thousands of years
before the conquest by capitalism and imperialism. Critics point
out that actually existing socialist states have made more repressive
laws and strengthened the proletarian state rather than allow
socialist law and the dictatorship of the proletariat to wither away.
Socialist countries should have been the first to abolish capitalist
capital punishment and end the war on drugs, for instance, long
before capitalist countries did. Ruth Gilmore convincingly argues
that it is possible to abolish prisons and defund the police to free
resources for community efforts to promote justice, peace, and love
without having to rely on what she called the Golden Gulag (2007) of
mass incarceration as an alternative to the original indigenous systems of justice.
In Anthills of the Savannah, Nigerian literary scholar Chinua
Achebe (1987) spoke through the character of Ikem Osodi, a satirical
editor of the National Gazette who gave a speech at a university
and the students asked him if he believed in the dictatorship of the
workers. He answered that he did not believe in a dictatorship of
any sort, and he asked the students why they dreamed of ruling by
dictatorship under a military dictatorship when they could not even
organize peaceful students’ union elections free of fraud and intimidation. We agree with Achebe’s implication that community policing
should be governed by the democracy of the masses and not by dictatorship of any sort, certainly not by genocidal racist-imperialistpatriarchal dictatorship, lest it is hijacked by elites addicted to the
intoxicating drink of absolute power that corrupts absolutely.
Other theorists who support the oppressive powers of the rich
disagreed with Marx about the intersectional oppressive classrace-gender character of law enforcement and criminal justice
under capitalism (Agozino, 2020). Emile Durkheim (1893) suggested
that social control of deviance simply evolves as society evolves
from what he called “mechanical solidarity” when allegiance to
norms is automatic; to “organic solidarity” when industrialization
brings about specialist organs with increased rules that people may
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 5
choose to follow in their different areas of work. For instance, in the
distant past, there were only few laws or commandments such as
“thou shall not kill; thou shall not steal” or even fewer rules like “do
unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” Durkheim spoke
for the capitalist ruling class by assuming that punishment becomes
less severe as the law evolves from sacred to profane rules.
According to Durkheim (1893) and without reference to the
African holocaust during slavery, punishment tended to be more
severe in those days because crimes against sacred rules were
fewer. But as rules increased in density, punishment became less
severe in secular societies where the deprivation of liberty (prison)
or monetary fine became the major forms of punishment. For this
reason, social control is very popular in every community as a
means of uniting the people around what they collectively accept as
their norms. When social change is rapid as could happen during a
revolution, what people expect is no longer what they experience
and so there would be an increase in deviance due to such “anomie.”
The social control mechanisms serve the function of restoring the
equilibrium in the society by rewarding law-abiding behaviors and
punishing deviant ones. But deviance can never be completely prevented because it serves positive and essential functions in society,
according to him.
African ancestors had no police force nor a court of law nor a
prison to enforce those commandments against abomination, but
there were no cases of kidnapping, corruption, bribery, theft, rape,
genocide, or slavery except when Arabs and Europeans arrived to
hunt Africans as prey for hundreds of years. Where Durkheim was
mistaken is that he believed that every community has a collective
conscience that governs their norms whereas the conscience of
those who dominate a society is often in conflict with the conscience of the masses who are opposed to oppression and exploitation. Whose conscience was the collective conscience under
apartheid, colonialism, or slavery?
Another theorist, Max Weber (1924), agreed that there is often
conflict of interests in any community, giving rise to the domination
6 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
of some over others. But he also disagreed with Marx about how
to solve such conflicts. Marx preferred a complete revolution to
change the structure of the society in the interest of all but Weber
preferred a system of reforms to eliminate discrimination in the
administration of justice through the rational ideal bureaucracy.
According to him, there are three forms of authority when it comes
to the administration of justice (viz. traditional, charismatic, and
bureaucratic).
Traditional authority depends on the knowledge of elders regarding what the culture or tradition accepts as normal and younger
generations accept the opinions of the elders mechanically without
question. But as society changes, charismatic, religious authorities
emerge to prophesy that God is angry because people are following
their own hearts. People may look up to the charismatic leaders to
come up with new laws of how to live a life of justice. Eventually,
the charismatic leader is forced to routinize his authority by writing
down the new rules to approximate bureaucratization and allow
representatives to be elected to make the laws while professionally
trained officials are organized in a hierarchy of authority to implement the laws without discrimination through the bureaucracy.
However, even Weber agreed that his rational ideal bureaucracy
could result in what he called an “iron cage” that is inflexible in
the administration of justice and that could result in caste-classgender injustice. But he believed that the bureaucracy is the most
technically superior way to administer justice in any society. He
was not keen on democratic administration because he saw democracy as a form of domination by elites over others, and he ruled
out pure democracy where all heads are equal. What the theory of
Weber lacks is the element of compassion for the suffering of others
(Bauman, 1989). Community policing, popular justice, and reparative justice may be better ways of administering justice in democratic societies than the rational ideal bureaucracy. The Nigerian Police
Force, for example, is a bureaucratic organization, but it is not capable of providing safety for communities unless the communities
organize to defend themselves. The Nazi forces were also bureauThe Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 7
cratized in a way that Weber would find rational and ideal but rather
than deliver justice, they embarked on huge crimes against humanity until they were defeated by the allied forces. Nigerian governors
are demanding state police formations that would report to them
and then through them to the federal police and thereby entrench
the security state ideology that would further take power away from
communities rather than empower community self-governance.
Just dessert theorists in Europe proposed what Pashukanis (1924),
following Marx, called the “commodity fetishism” in law, a capitalist
system that places value on anything by treating it like a commodity
to be exchanged in the market. According to Pashukanis, capitalist
law insists punishment should be made to fit the crime as if someone were buying a commodity at a price calibrated to fit the value of
the commodity. The trouble with commodity fetishism in law is that
some crimes are so severe that no punishment would ever be calibrated to fit the seriousness of the crime. Besides, in capitalist societies like Nigeria, the crimes of the powerful are rarely calibrated
under commodity fetishism to exact the fitting punishment but are
treated with impunity while the poor and the powerless get given
excessive punishment even when they are innocent, as Agozino theorized in Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997) and
also in Counter-Colonial Criminology (2003).
Community policing calls for a return to our indigenous peacemaking methods of social control by teaching vigilance, love, forgiveness, and respect; and by watching out for our brothers and
sisters as ways to prevent crimes rather than rely exclusively on
colonialist policing and the punishment of offenders. Only then
will the youth stop protesting and demonstrating against the Serious Armed Robbery Squad (SARS), a mobile armed security unit
deployed by the federal government. The youth continued to
protest on the streets, demanding an end to the unit with the hashtag, #EndSARS, despite dozens of them being shot and killed for
expressing their freedom in 2020. The global #BlackLivesMatter
movement directly supports our conclusion, in line with Angela
Davis (2003), Ruth Gilmore (2007), Julia Chinyere Opara (2005),
8 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
and Viviane Saleh-Hanna (2015), among others, the hauntology of
imperialist systems of policing need to be abolished to make way
for more humane socialist management of the affairs of communities with inspiration from critical race theory of race-class-gender
intersectionality or articulation.
What Is Community Policing?
Policing is always wider than the professional police, which is an
institution that emerged as recently as 1829 in Britain and quickly
spread across the world. Prior to the emergence of a “professional
police force,” the common law practice of night watchmen, vigilantism, or the raising of hue and cries were the strategies relied upon
to maintain law and order while businesses and the rich relied on
hiring night watchmen. With the increase in industrialization, there
was a need for specialization and an increased division of labor
and professionalization in all walks of life. Yet, people did not trust
the government having repressive powers over citizens especially in
England where the Magna Carta guaranteed rights to the citizens
under common law except when there was specific legislation forbidding a certain act or omission (Lyman, 1964).
Most citizens had every right to mistrust the government because
it was not a democratic government given that only 11 percent of
adult men, and no women, had the right to vote based on property
ownership. When the working people rallied to demand the right
to vote in 1818 in Manchester, the volunteer force of yeomen were
called in and they rode roughshod on horseback wounding many
women, children, and workers who fought back. Then armed troops
with bayonets were called in to restore law and order and more
people were killed and wounded. The uproar resulted in the reconsideration of the reliance on vigilantes or the payment by businessowners to armed gangs for the protection of their properties. The
then home secretary, Robert Peel, came up with the idea of a trained
and uniformed police “service” to maintain order, with the consent
of the people and not by force.
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 9
The people were having none of that. There were massive demonstrations against the idea of having an armed branch of the government with the power to deprive the people of their fundamental
freedom of movement. The government explained that this was not
a threat to law-abiding citizens who would be protected by the
police and by the community while the police were to be armed with
only night sticks and not with bayonets. Only those who were up
to no good would have anything to fear. But the people were very
afraid of the police in a country with the recent history of the bloody
assizes where there were death penalties for things like hunting,
fishing, or gathering firewood from the king’s forest; where millions
of Africans were owned as property in distant colonies for hundreds
of years; where no poor workers and no woman had the right to
vote; and where the poor were punished with transportation to far
colonies on trumped up charges.
The government performed an incredible feat by getting the public to accept that industrialization was changing society so fast that
reliance on the informal ways of maintaining order was no longer
feasible for the control of the increasing numbers of pauperized
criminal elements dramatized by the stories of Oliver Twist and
Robin Hood (though neither Oliver nor Robin committed any real
crimes).
The hegemonic victory of the government as an intellectual and
moral leader was so complete that even people on the ideological
left have since come to accept that the maintenance of law and
order is “an unqualified human good” even under oppressive laws
as E. P. Thompson (1975) stated in Whigs and Hunters. The government must have won such a resounding victory by appealing to the
fear of crime even among the poor and the middle class alike who
demand more police presence in poor communities to protect them
from poor desperadoes. With the population of formerly enslaved
Africans increasing in England after the abolition of the slave trade
and with poor workers increasingly restive about what Engels (1845)
called the Conditions of the Working Class in England, it was easy for
the government to convince citizens that the police would be there
10 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
to protect girls from rapists and to help old ladies cross the streets
while making sure that the loony left would not destroy the British
tradition of honest hard work for honest pay.
As soon as the government won widespread support for the institutionalization of the police in Britain, the plantation owners in the
Americas quickly copied the model as a more efficient way to keep
the millions of enslaved Africans and impoverished white workers in
check. With the story of the incredible victory of the Haitian revolutionaries over a succession of the best armies of white invaders
still fresh in their ears, it must have been easy for governments in
the Americas to convince their workers to pay higher taxes to support a professional police service. Instead of paying enslaved-people
catchers or using a volunteer posse to capture runaway slaves, the
plantation owners could rely on a force trained and armed by the
government to do their dirty jobs for them.
The model of police service with unarmed officers or “bobbies”
(named after Sir Robert “Bobby” Peel) patrolling the streets of London and relying on the logic of Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes with
the support of the people was different from the policing of colonial
locations like the plantations of the Caribbean and the colonies of
Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Africa and India where the preferred model was what Philip Ahire (1991) termed militarized Imperial Policing. In West Africa, the British colonizers adopted this model
by relying on what Onyeozili (2004) theorized as “Gunboat Criminology” as the preferred mechanism for the conquest and pacification of the natives and for the regular policing of the colonies. They
also had what they called “court messengers” or kotima who were
only armed with batons but made it clear that any group of people
challenging colonial authority would be read the riot act and would
be violently suppressed by calling in the colonial army.
This was the experience of the Ashanti who defeated the British
invading army but were later subdued with the aid of the newly
invented repeat-action rifles and with an alliance between the
invaders and the traditional rivals of the Ashanti, the Fante confederation. The British sent their army of conscripts to Benin in what
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 11
they called a punitive expedition, but they were in fact a group of
armed robbers who looted the treasures of the kingdom and shamelessly displayed the loot in the British Museum to attract tourists
who contribute enormously to the economy.
In Eastern Nigeria, the Ekumeku resistance war lasted for years
while King Jaja of Opobo was being duped—having been invited for
a meeting on a British Naval Squadron boat and then subdued with
naval forces before being deported to the Caribbean to make way
for the complete domination of British companies over the lucrative trade in palm oil. Yet, the people continued to resist in the form
of the defiance by Aro middlemen from Arochukwu who wanted to
retain the control of trade in palm oil in the interior. But the Aro
were subdued by the terroristic burning of their Long Juju shrine by
British troops who falsely claimed that they did it to stop the slave
trade that they themselves launched and ran for hundreds of years
before abolishing it under pressure from militant enslaved Africans
and their allies, according to Chinweizu (1975) in The West and the
Rest of Us.
The idea of community policing emerged to underscore the fact
that except the community keeps watch, the police only lose sleep
in vain. There will never be enough police officers to keep everyone
under surveillance in order to stop crimes or to prevent them.
More than 90 percent of crimes are solved only with information
from members of the community. The exception is in cases where
the crimes involve consenting adults—for instance, prostitution or
drugs, especially when no violence is involved. In most other cases,
the police cannot solve crimes if citizens do not risk becoming witnesses ready to testify or anonymously tip off officers about a crime.
As the saying goes, you cannot spell community without unity, nor
can you spell it without I, and I cannot spell it without U. It is the
community that is best equipped to observe crimes and report them
or try to stop them especially in poor countries like Nigeria where
the officers remain at roadblocks looking for bribes from motorists
or sit behind their desks demanding bribes. But even in rich countries like Japan, China, and Singapore policing is community-orien12 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
tated with the expectation that members of the community will be
the ones who will say something when they see something going
wrong.
Many Western European governments and governments from
North America admired the miracle of low crimes and falling prison
populations in the rich countries of Asia. They sent their criminologists to study the Asian model and see if they could apply
the lessons to policing in countries like the United States, with its
alarmingly increasing prison industrial complex. What they found
out, according to Phillip Reichel (1994) in Comparative Justice Systems, was that Japan retained a strong community-based moral
value system that the Western countries lacked. For instance, the
worst punishment for a naughty child in Japan would be to lock the
child outside the home. But if you lock an American child outside of
the home, the child will probably disappear to the mall and spend
money like a rock star because the United States operates under
the moral system of radical individualism where there is no shame
for a child to scream at the parents and say, “I hate you,” or call the
police and child protective service to arrest the parents. To Americans, the worst punishment for children is to lock them inside the
bedroom away from their friends (even though they can still talk to
their friends on their smartphones).
Reichel explained that the Japanese use the metaphor of the Bonsai plant that is groomed from inception to grow in controlled patterns to explain the fact that most Americans would not tolerate
the cultural constraints that produced the ordered society of Japan.
Thus, more than 90 percent of cases that go to court in Japan
result in guilty confessions and the plea for mitigation in punishment and more than 90 percent get suspended sentences; whereas
many offenders in the United States are unrepentant despite of,
or because of the heavy reliance on plea-bargaining to settle cases
in more than 90 percent of US cases. The community-policing
approach in Japan works because the police officer is posted to
the neighborhood bloc and lives among neighbors who respect him
as the Honorable Mister Walkabout. The United States prefers the
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 13
heavily armed police officer cruising in a car and racially profiling
members of the community who are frequently shot and killed.
The idea of community policing is appealing especially because
if members of the community decide to physically assault their
own children or sexually abuse members of their community, the
police may never hear of it and the crime may continue indefinitely.
However, if members of the community decide to end a criminal
practice by rising up against it (offenses such as female genital mutilation, child abandonment, discrimination against Osu caste members, rape, or wife battering have been outlawed as crimes) the
community can more easily identify the culprits and try to put a
stop to it. Because the community does not have the repressive
powers of the police, members of the community might decide to
punish offenders by temporarily excommunicating them or by making them pay a fine rather than relying on excessive force. This is
especially the case in instances where the offence is something like
fishing in a river where fishing is prohibited by tradition or in cases
of drunkenness and adultery. Usually, when the offender apologizes
and asks for forgiveness, there is reconciliation and the restoration
of peace in the community in ways more effective than punitive justice by the police force and the criminal justice system.
Some Nigerians brag that their region controls all the security
arms of the government as if they are still under a military dictatorship but their region also suffers the greatest levels of insecurity
because, according to an old Igbo saying, the person who kills with
the knife dies by the knife. Arming cattle herders so that they can
kill poachers or using the military to torture, kill, and detain South
East youth simply for exercising their democratic rights to freedom
of expression is to risk the wellbeing of the entire nation by militarizing civil society and curtailing the freedom of all citizens. Communities should beware of organizing vigilante groups trained and
armed for self-defense because chances are that such groups would
be used against members of the community in elite struggles for
political patronage.
14 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
The Scientific Method and Community Policing
Policing is regarded by Europeans as a science that could be taught
and practiced with objectivity. However, crime is messy and chaotic
to such an extent that the type of science involved is not always
reliable and objective. In Europe and settler colonial locations, the
streets are planned in Cartesian patterns of grids to make it easy
for the police or the fire brigade to block off trouble and deal with
it forcefully. In Africa, where people had been hunted as prey and
kidnapped or subjected to genocide for centuries, we choose to
design our streets in a chaotic pattern known as African Fractals to
make it difficult for any enemies to catch us (Eglash, 1999; and Bangura, 2012). Initially, Europeans tried to dismiss nonlineal geometry as irrational, but they have since discovered that the principles
of interconnectedness, fractional dimensions, self-similarity, recursion, infinity, and chaos could be used to design cyberspace in such
a way that it is difficult for dictators to control Internet communities. The same principles of African fractals can be applied to community policing because crime and deviance are not lineal, they are
fractal and chaotic.
This is part of the reasons why there is an increasing demand for
community policing around the world and particularly in Nigeria
with the full understanding that even without being trained scientists, members of the community have a vested interest in maintaining peaceful coexistence. With all the scientific equipment in the
world, the police will never be able to monopolize the maintenance
of order in any community, but the community can maintain peaceful coexistence even without the police force.
We conclude this chapter by observing that policing is too important to be left to trained officers alone. Science is simply the system
of systematic observation of events in nature to test preliminary
assumptions or to lead to generalizations that could be subjected to
further tests as part of the efforts to construct theories for future
testing. The scientific method is not foolproof but is error prone and
members of the community can certainly police themselves by rely-
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 15
ing on objective observations that are verifiable to produce expectations and assumptions that are testable for sound conclusion.
This scientific method was recommended to Africans by Azikiwe in
Renascent Africa in 1937 but two years later, Awolowo (1939) disagreed and recommended juju as a scientific method with which
Africans could kill their enemies by mentioning their names three
times at a road junction or simply use it to vanish from police detention. At that time, Nigerians believed that Azikiwe (popularly known
as Zik) must have received supernatural powers from Mami Wata
(Mermaid) to make him bold enough to challenge the unjust colonial rule of the British. Zik told them that he had no juju and that
he relied on social science by establishing newspapers to inform the
people and by mobilizing them to fight for their rights. We hope that
Africans will learn from Azikiwe by setting up online newspapers for
their communities so that members of the community can report
missing people or crimes and thereby mobilize the community to
help to arrest the offenders and stop crimes.
In conventional policing, we are made to believe that the trained
officers rely on finger printing and DNA evidence or forensic science that would help them to identify the suspects and their
motives so that justice would be speedily done. On the contrary,
such a fantastic scientific model of policing is rare even in Hollywood or Nollywood movies where intimidation, oracles, and psychics are sometimes relied upon to solve cases. Regular police
officers tend to operate under what is known as the deductive logic
in research design. They start with the broad theory that there is
a legal code to be enforced and that those who break the code are
breaking the social contract that binds everyone together; and so,
they are asking to be punished. However, community policing starts
from the assumption that the direct observation of a crime is not
always possible and so members of the community may rely more
on grounded theory to build up from specific observations toward a
general conclusion of “who done it” or how to prevent it from being
done in the first place. We believe that this inductive logic is also
applicable to regular police work but the ideology of scientism gives
16 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
the mistaken impression that the police can solve crimes on their
own with or without the support of the community.
Accordingly, we recommend that the inductive logic of grounded
theory should be openly taught in the community to equip everyone
with the knowledge of the principles of systematic observation,
documentation, and testing of hypotheses without prejudice against
some members of the community and without violence. For
instance, the community should be taught how to operate a Facebook or blog site with designated phone numbers where stories
of missing people could be uploaded and crime events reported
to alert every member of the community to be on the lookout for
the offenders and the victims. Those who have smartphones should
be taught how to record evidence and how to present the evidence systematically. Since even science can make mistakes, we
propose that community policing should involve community training on validity, reliability, and ethical issues in research to avoid
jumping to flawed conclusions and to avoid doing harm to the reputation of innocent suspects and vulnerable victims. We encourage
every community to learn how to make peace between conflicting
individuals through forgiveness and restitution to avoid the escalation of violence and vendetta.
“The Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2020—$738 billion—was the
largest on record” and came “at the expense of healthcare, education, infrastructure spending, and public health research. For years,
our government has failed to invest in programs that actually keep
our country safe and healthy. By over-prioritizing the Pentagon and
military solutions, our country is drastically underprepared for any
crisis that needs a non-military solution,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee in 2020.
African rulers should go beyond the shedding of crocodile tears
over the murder of George Floyd by the US police and recognize
that the police forces imposed by colonizers were designed to kill
Africans in genocidal proportions. Decolonize the police and prisons
in Africa! Reunite Africans in the Federal Republic of African States
or the Peoples Republic of Africas. As Igbo women often sing, “Udo
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 17
ga adi ebe ifunanya di”; “there will be peace where there is love. Love
one another, Africans.” Forgive the unforgivable the way people of
African descent forgave the holocaust of enslavement as recunted
by Du Bois in Black Reconstruction; the way the Igbo forgave genocide in Biafra as recounted by Achebe (2012) in There Was a Country,
by Nwankwo (1972) in Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra, and by EkweEkwe (2006) in Biafra Revisited; and the way the South Africans forgave the crimes of aparthied without seeking punitive justice while
seeking reparative justice as recounted by Tutu and Tutu (2014).
Love the enemy as yourself: sometimes you are your own worst
enemy.
Derrida (2001) examined the claim that forgiveness comes to us
from the Abrahamic religions of the Book. However, he found that
while all the three Abrahamic faiths preach forgiveness, each one
appears to reserve punishment for that which is deemed unforgivable. Derrida argues that true forgivenss is infinite and always
open in an ever-merciful way that can be found exemplarily in the
Africana tradition of the forgiveness of the unforgivable. In The Book
of Forgiving, Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu (2014) teach that there
is nothing that is not forgivable and there is no one who does not
deserve to be forgiven something. Ask for forgiveness and forgive
others in order to heal the the self and the community.
We believe that there are good and dedicated officers in every
police force but, it is simply impossible to accept that bad apples
were responsible for the refusal to apologize for the failure to arrest
even a single suspect or just open an investigation into mass killings
during the genocide against millions of the Igbo, as Achebe documented in There Was a Country and as Soyinka (1993) mourned in
The Man Died. Similarly, it is not true that mediocrity or incompetence is responsible for the fact that the police have not managed to
convict even a single terrorist suspect or murderous cattle herder
the way they sometimes arrested and convicted armed robbers and
fraudsters or the way they attacked nonviolent prodemocracy protesters and detained journalists without trial. The problems of prejudicial abuse of power, corruption, and extrajudicial killings by the
18 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
police in the face of mounting insecurity appear to be systemic and
defy solution by relying exclusively on the colonial police structures designed to occupy the land and intimidate the people rather
than defend their rights and protect their property as Achebe (1983)
observed in The Trouble with Nigeria.
These failures are part of the reasons why the clamour for community policing is rising given that what we have does not appear
to be working in the public’s interests. This book encourages us
to examine the intricacies of community policing lest we clone
the oppressive structures of the genocidal colonial police state and
deepen the use of fear and force to keep people under subjugation
but without reducing insecurity. People should not see community
policing as the only solution in societies under the domination of
racist-imperialist-patriarchy. We believe that civic eduction for all
in the community would raise empathy for the sufferings of fellow
Africans, but we also need to restructure the inherited legacies of
colonial domination in order to increase civic engagement and selfefficacy for social justice. Without a law court, a police force, or
prison-industrial complex, ancient Africans maintained self-discipline and peace by adhering to the 42 Laws of Maat, the goddess of
justice who weights all souls on a scale before allowing those who
observed Maat to pass to Arus (world of the ancestors), according to
chapter 125 of the Papyrus of Ani (Karenga, 2006):
I have not committed sin.
I have not committed robbery with violence.
I have not stolen.
I have not slain men or women.
I have not stolen food.
I have not swindled offerings.
I have not stolen from God/Goddess.
I have not told lies.
I have not carried away food.
I have not cursed.
I have not closed my ears to truth.
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 19
I have not committed adultery.
I have not made anyone cry.
I have not felt sorrow without reason.
I have not assaulted anyone.
I am not deceitful.
I have not stolen anyone’s land.
I have not been an eavesdropper.
I have not falsely accused anyone.
I have not been angry without reason.
I have not seduced anyone’s wife.
I have not polluted myself.
I have not terrorized anyone.
I have not disobeyed the Law.
I have not been exclusively angry.
I have not cursed God/Goddess.
I have not behaved with violence.
I have not caused disruption of peace.
I have not acted hastily or without thought.
I have not overstepped my boundaries of concern.
I have not exaggerated my words when speaking.
I have not worked evil.
I have not used evil thoughts, words, or deeds.
I have not polluted the water.
I have not spoken angrily or arrogantly.
I have not cursed anyone in thought, word or deeds.
I have not placed myself on a pedestal.
I have not stolen what belongs to God/Goddess.
I have not stolen from or disrespected the deceased.
I have not taken food from a child.
I have not acted with insolence.
I have not destroyed property belonging to God/Goddess.
This book’s cover illustration comes from classical African writings
and paintings in ancient Egypt dating back to about five thousand
years ago, depicting the judgment over the souls of people to see
20 | The Idea/Theory of Community Policing
if they have observed Maat or truth and justice in their lifetime.
The scale of justice used in law courts today dates back to the early
African imagination and, the Ten Commandments of Moses who
may have borrowed them from the 42 laws of Maat listed above.
By coincidence, some of the words they used sound familiar to the
Igbo as Catherine Acholonu (2010) maintained—Arus is almost Arusi,
and Ani is Mother Earth, even Isis sounds like the beginning or isi
isi, the “beginning of the beginning” or “head of head,” in Igbo (if
pronounced like Africans or the way that Ethiopians pronounce the
name today and not like Europeans who would say Aisis instead of
Isisi as in Genesis—jee na isi isi in Igbo—go to the beginning). The
ancient Egyptians and Jews may have come from Ndi Igbo, or early
humans, ndi gboo—who are coincidentally called the Jews of Africa
by many today. Perhaps it is the Jews who are the Igbo of the Middle
East because human life originated in Africa and not in the Middle
East.
The Idea/Theory of Community Policing | 21
2. History and Evolution of
Modern Policing in Nigeria
Establishment of “Formal” Policing In Nigeria
The police are the most visible entity of the criminal justice system
and, by design, one of the few public organizations that respond
to calls for service (Holden, 1986). The history of organized police
dates back to England, where the first modern metropolitan police
force was created in 1829 to take over the role of the security constables. Among the reasons for the founding of Britain’s organized
police were: the widespread corruption of the constables and the
justices; the Industrial Revolution and consequent growlth in wealth
and population of towns, which multiplied opportunities for crime;
and the breakdown of law and order (Critchley, 1967; Hart, 1951)
The Need for Nigerian Police
In Nigeria however, the idea of establishing the police had no bearing to the same reasons it was established in England. Rather, the
establishment of policing was designed to serve the colonial needs
of oppression and exploitation. Beginning in 1845, the British
became more involved in the affairs of Lagos. They were also experiencing some serious law-enforcement problems in their selfimposed task of “protecting the lives and property of the indigenous
people,” the European merchants, other businessmen, and Christian
missionaries (Tamuno, 1970). Owing to this involvement, in 1851,
the British Navy bombarded Lagos into submission, sacked King
Kosoko, and installed the puppet Oba Akitoye on the throne of
Lagos (Ikime, 1977). In 1861, ten years after the attack, Lagos was
“formally” annexed and made a British colony.
It is obvious that while Akitoye was willing to sign the British
treaty to regain the throne, he was not willing to cede Lagos to
| 23
the British. When he died in 1853, he was succeeded by his son
Dosunmu (Docemo in some versions), who in turn was pressured
into signing a treaty agreeing to British occupation of Lagos. This
period between 1852 and 1861 was a period of informal jurisdiction
and had an important bearing on the origin, development, and role
of the modern Nigerian Police Force that began in Lagos (Tamuno,
1970).
It is quite clear, as Ikime (1977) stated, that Lagos was not bombarded in 1851 because Kosoko was a notorious slave trader, nor
did the British take over full powers in 1861 because Dosunmu, the
new oba (king), had revived the slave trade. The real issue, therefore, was the British determination to control the trade of Lagos and
the Yoruba hinterland. However, it was not long before they realized
that the organizational arrangement in the Lagos area during that
period failed to provide the necessary security for commerce and
other pursuits.
Apart from the succession debacles that later plagued Lagos in
the 1940s and 1950s, there were other developments in the region
that had important bearings on the security of Lagos. These events
were the consequences of the Yoruba wars of the nineteenth century that threatened the security of areas like Ikorodu and Egbaland,
which were Lagos’s next-door neighboring kingdoms. Particularly
alarming was the reality of the alliance between the exiled King
Kosoko and King Ghezo of Dahomey, which threatened lives and the
chances of “legitimate” commerce (of British merchants) on Lagos
Island (Tamuno, 1970).
Common sense and prudence, therefore, dictated anxiety on the
part of the British Consul and European residents to have armed
forces at their disposal to protect their commercial interests. In
response, Consul Foote proposed the establishment of a consular
guard of one hundred men to be permanently stationed in Lagos,
and controlled by consular agents. This marked the first idea of
a police force in colonial Nigeria. Foote’s request, however, was
turned down because of the reluctance of the Foreign Office to
commit British capital to Lagos without assurance of any returns.
24 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
Unlike the British, Ahire (1991) has argued that the emerging ruling
class in colonial Nigeria was a foreign and illegitimate one that
sought to dominate and exploit the indigenous people in the interest of its own metropolitan economy. The effort of this foreign ruling class to subdue the indigenous people, and to impose a careful
surveillance over them in order to forestall any popular rebellion,
created an obsession with the policing of public order. The result
was to resort to conversion of the Hausa constabulary into a police
force to protect British merchants in Lagos.
The Hausa Police
The sudden death of Consul Foote in 1861 led to the appointment
of William McCoskry as the acting governor of Lagos Colony. In the
effort to tighten its grip on the affairs of Lagos and ensure full control, McCoskry organized and established the nucleus of the first
police force—a Hausa constabulary of thirty men (Tamuno, 1970;
The Nigerian Police Force, 1981). This formation marked the beginning of the first modern police in the history of Lagos. It was also the
first modern police force in the territories later designated Nigeria
by the British (Tamuno, 1970).
One distinctive feature of the Hausa constabulary was that it
was mainly military in character, although the men did perform
some civil police duties. For this, Ahire (1991) has pointed out that
the nineteenth-century policing in Britain cannot be substituted
wholesale for the policing experience of colonial Nigeria, even
though its basic logic is generally relevant. For modern historians
the paramilitary nature of the new police symbolizes the evidence
of imperial authority in Lagos. The police performed essentially beat
duties at the trading depots of the British merchants, and at the
same time became the object of incessant attacks from the public
who resented their presence.
In the next year the strength of the constabulary was augmented
to one hundred men to form the “Armed Police Force.” By October
1863 the strength rose to six hundred and was called the “Armed
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 25
Hausa Police Force,” because it consisted mainly of Hausa-speaking
ex-slaves from Sierra Leone (Ahire, 1991). Earlier, in 1862, a battalion
of the West Indian Regiment had been moved from Gambia to Lagos
to complement the new police force.
With the police in place, Henry Stanhope Freeman, the new governor (1862–1865), established four different courts—a police court,
a commercial court, a criminal court, and a slave court. The police
court, manned exclusively by the police, settled all petty cases. The
criminal court, chaired by a stipendiary magistrate assisted by two
British merchants as assessors, handled the more serious cases. The
slave court (staffed exactly like the criminal court) heard cases relating to slavery. The commercial court, manned exclusively by British
merchants, handled all cases of debts and breach of contract (Ahire,
1991).
The relevance of this judicial setup was fourfold. The first was the
prominence given to British commercial interests in the new system
of courts. The second was the total absence of Nigerians in a facet
of judicial administration that had their interest as a prime target.
Third was the inextricable implication of the colonial government in
private British commercial concerns. Fourth was the obviously ominous future and inevitable public perception of the colonial police
who were employed by all these courts to maintain social control.
This early employment of police resources to advance the colonial
political agenda in fact shaped the future of policing as an agency
of oppression in the whole history of Nigeria. Many historians and
criminologists—for example, Alemika (1988), Ahire (1991), Ikime
(1977), Crowder (1978a), Tamuno (1970)—are of the opinion that the
preoccupations of the police during the colonial era were tied solely
to British ambitions in Nigeria. Their view, according to Alemika
(1988) has been that the colonial state ultimately rests on force and
violence and the capacity to realize its ambition despite opposition from the colonized peoples. In Alemika’s words: “The colonial
objectives were (to varying degrees during the phases of colonialism
in Nigeria) prosecuted through organised governmental violence,
vandalism and plunder on the part of the colonizers… The sundry
26 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
administrative, coercive and surveillance organs (police, prisons,
courts, tribunals, ‘native’ authorities, Residents and District Officers) were established to prosecute, promote and defend British
imperialistic interests in Nigeria” (p. 164).
Worthy of note is the fact that imperial policing orientations and
preoccupations have been maintained and strengthened by postcolonial governments in Nigeria. Alemika (1988) has explained that
despite formal independence, the political and economic conditions
of exploitation, oppression, and gross power and economic injustices that gave rise to colonial policing policies have not been discarded. In other words, the nationalists against whom police terror
and violence were used by the colonialists, and to whom power was
subsequently transferred at independence, cushioned themselves
into employing the same police brutality and terror against their
opponents in post-independence political power struggles.
No sooner was the police force established and the rudiments of
a judicial bureaucracy set in motion than the Armed Hausa Police
were employed in a series of government atrocities. In August 1864,
for example, in addition to burning down Ajido village, sixty constables shot and killed Chief Hunkain Abujoko of Ajido on charges
of armed robbery and violence. In April 1865, 118 constables along
with eighteen marines from HMS Investigator and HMS Handy (gun
boats) attacked the Egba force who besieged Ikorodu, which the
British considered a “friendly town.” In August 1865, sixty-two constables were used to attack Edinmo village for disturbing the peace
of the neighborhood (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970). Again, on 18 March
1892, five hundred constables of the Armed Hausa Police, together
with a detachment of the Gold Coast Hausas of the Second West
Indian Regiment, and seven special-service officers from England,
attacked and defeated Ijebu. The British victory over Ijebu led to
peace treaties with towns such as Abeokuta, Ife, Oyo, Ibadan, and
the subsequent declaration of protectorate over the whole of
Yorubaland (Ahire, 1991; Crowder, 1968).
While the greater proportion of the police concentrated on military escapades in the Lagos hinterland, Governor Freeman ensured
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 27
that a small section of the Armed Hausa Police was designated as
“civil police” and were assigned courtroom and guard duties. From
the late 1860s, under Captain John Hawley Glover (Freeman’s successor as governor), some communities were allowed to choose one
or two constables as “country police” or district police. Their duties
were to patrol the outlying areas.
By 1895 and owing to the completion of the “pacification” of
Lagos, Police Ordinance No. 10 of 1895, dated 27 December, was
passed. This ordinance established a civil police force called the
Lagos Police as a body distinct from the constabulary. In 1901 the
constabulary was absorbed into the West African Frontier Force
(WAFF), thereby leaving the Lagos Police (civil police) as the sole
police force in Lagos (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970). The new civil police
were comprised of a commissioner, two assistant commissioners,
one superintendent, one assistant superintendent, one pay- and
quartermaster, one sergeant major, eight sergeants, eight corporals,
fifty first-class “privates” and one master tailor (Tamuno, 1970).
In this book we regard December 1895 as the year when the
Nigerian Police was civilianized, forming the basis for the professionalization of the force. Not only was the military constabulary
replaced, but then acting Governor George Denton replaced the
“Hausa boys” with indigenous Yoruba recruits. In his speech before
this radical move, Denton observed: “In our Hausa Force we have
a body of men dissociated from the countries immediately around
Lagos both by birth and religion, and who are as a matter of fact
the hereditary enemies of the Yorubas. This is such an enormous
advantage in any interior complication that I should be sorry to see
it abandoned if it be possible to obtain a supply of recruits in any
other way” (Tamuno, 1970: 28).
In spite of their shortcomings, the new civil police had goals and
clearly delineated duties. By further Police Ordinance No. 14 of 1897,
the Lagos Police Force was to become “an armed force.” Its general duties included “the prevention and detection of crime, the
repression of internal disturbance, and the defense of the Colony
and protection against external aggression.” The ordinance further
28 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
increased the force strength to include an armorer and replaced
the title of “private” with “constable” (Tamuno, 1970). Although this
change was mainly bureaucratic, as most Yoruba-speaking members of the constabulary were absorbed into the new “all indigenous” force, its principle was a milestone in the development of the
police in Nigeria. It was also obvious that the military complexion of
the constabulary was present in the new force.
Qualifications and Training
Alemika (1988) has charged that the traditions of civility, efficiency,
and submission to the rule of law that constituted the bedrock of
the British police system were not emphasized in the establishment
or running of colonial police forces in Nigeria. On the contrary, he
has argued that law-and-order maintenance and riot suppression
functions of the police were emphasized to the exclusion of social
services. In the Lagos Police the qualifications for the officer cadre,
like those of the assistant commissioner of police until 1897, were
“a sound knowledge of drill” in addition to a “clear practical knowledge of criminal law as well as a sober judgment and great personal
energy” (Tamuno, 1970: 29). With the exception of a few officers
attached to the force who had previous professional police experience in criminal investigation, past service in the military seemed to
be the main criterion.
In the basic training, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) mode of
training was adopted, and most of the early officers sent for training abroad went to Dublin. Ahire (1991) has pointed out that the RIC
connection with the Nigerian Police was based on the preplanned
colonial intent for the type of government Britain wished to establish in Nigeria. In effect, the Colonial Office had decided on one similar to the one in Ireland where the immigrant Protestant Anglican
gentry, supported by their home government in England, had established dominance over the predominantly Catholic Irish peasants.
The RIC there was a force designed to control any opposition to
obnoxious laws passed to protect the seizure of political power by a
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 29
nonindigenous class in order to perpetuate the economic exploitation of the indigenous people.
According to Ahire (1991):
The RIC was a paramilitary organization, renowned for its
partisanship and brutality. It was well trained in military
drills and the use of firearms, and was placed under the
centralized control of an Inspector-General for easy mobilization. It was conferred with immense powers by broad
and discretionary legal provisions. The Special Powers Act
of 1922 authorized the RIC and troops to arrest, question,
search, detain and intern without the due process of law…
The adoption of special powers and emergency provisions
in place of the rule of law is another feature which Ireland
shared with colonial Nigeria (p. 55).
On the aspect of further training, the colonial government fared
abysmally poor in rating. Other than three batches of Lagos Police
sent for training in Dublin or Belfast in 1895, 1898, and 1899, no further encouragement was given to training overseas. Altogether only
nine officers of the Lagos Police Force were sent for overseas training. In a letter abolishing provision of overseas training for African
officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in 1899, Governor
William MacGregor maintained that the overseas training policy
amounted to a waste of time and money. He stated [to the Colonial Office]: “Several men and officers have been trained in England
in order that they should teach others here. They have not done
so [sic] generally the men sent come back spoiled, proud and above
their work and position. I have therefore no intention of continuing this system save in very special cases unless you are of contrary opinion” (Colonial Sectretary’s Office, CSO 1.1.27, 1899).In 1898,
a separate detective branch was opened up under the initiative of
Assistant Police Commissioner J.F. Carroll. An assistant superintendent, F. Colley Green, became the first African to head the new
department. Though very resourceful, his department was handi-
30 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
capped by the lack of a professionally trained detective. In his criticism of the department, Carroll wrote:
Our Detectives are not good investigators. They are all men
of some service who have been selected through having
shown aptitude in the past, and are naturally shrewd, have a
wide knowledge of local criminals… As burglar catchers they
are almost equal to any police officers I have ever known…
but were I to send them… to inquire into a case of murder,
I would do so without confidence. They would be without
local knowledge which is in Lagos their strong point (Colonial Secretary’s Office, CSO 1.1.21, 1898).
The relevance of this statement is to show that the colonial officials
understood the importance of training and professionalism, especially in the detective branch, yet they would not send anyone for
the much-needed training. It would amount to depriving them of
the profit they made through exploitation.
In 1891 the “Night Water Police” were established to patrol the
Lagos/Dahomey (now Republic of Benin) frontier to control liquor
smuggling along the border. In 1899, some sixteen more people were
added to the strength of the Lagos Police Force to form the nucleus
of the Railway Police section of the force. Other than these new
departmental additions, not much was achieved in the era of MacGregor in Lagos due to his stoppage of the much-needed overseas
training to enhance the standards of the force (Tamuno, 1970).
Police Developments in the Oil Rivers/Niger Coast
Protectorates
Ahire (1991) has argued that the circumstances under which a police
force was established in Oil Rivers Protectorate were similar to
those noted in Lagos. Here, as in Lagos, the police force was organized as a buffer against the existing indigenous interference with
coastal commerce. The end result was the imposition and spread of
British colonial authority.
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 31
As noted, the Industrial Revolution created a desire on the part
of European merchants to come to Africa in search of raw materials
to feed their industries at home. Additionally, the official proscription of the slave trade forced Britain to place its navy on the waters
along the African coast to enforce the ban on this trade in humans.
Hand in hand with the naval squadron came European merchants
who swarmed over Africa in a desperate attempt to establish “legitimate” trade (then in palm oil).
In 1827 the British acquired from Spain the right to use Fernando
Po (now Equatorial Guinea) as a naval base and appointed Colonel
Edward Nicolls as its first governor. This governor was charged with
the onerous duty of negotiating treaties with the potentates of the
Bights of Benin and Biafra as a means of exterminating the slave
trade (Anene, 1966). This was the policy of gradual penetration.
Nicolls was succeeded by Captain W. Owen as the governor of
Fernando Po. Like his predecessor, he continued in his dealings
with the chiefs along the Nigerian coast, and in 1839 secured the
first “slave trade” treaty between Britain and Bonny. At this point
it might be fair to argue that the role of the British government in
the affairs of the Nigerian coast was that of an impartial guardian
solely interested in exterminating the slave trade and replacing it
with “legitimate trade” (Anene, 1966). Without formal declaration,
three principal forces were now in action in the coastal region of
what would later become known as Nigeria.
The first force was the coastal chiefs and traders who sold people
to be enslaved and were now making a transition into legitimate
trade. The second force was the British traders who were willing to
employ all kinds of commercial machinations to rake in huge profits.
The third force in the equation was the British government, whose
foreign secretary Henry John Temple (3rd Viscount Palmerston) by
now had no doubt in his mind that the best way of securing and preserving wealth [from Africa] was the power to enforce the pax Britannica (Anene, 1966). It was a paradox that the relationships among
these strange bedfellows shaped the future of Nigeria.
32 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
With time the interest and trade of the British merchants began
to become entrenched. Furthermore, they began pleading to the
home government for protection against “mushroom kings” (seen
as puffed up with self-importance but lacking genuine royalty).
According to the British foreign secretary, “it is the business of Government to open and secure the roads for the merchant” (Anene,
1966, p. 29). It was on the basis of this belief, and to advance British
commercial and political interests, that a formal consulate was
established on the island of Fernando Po, and John Beecroft was
appointed consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra in 1849 (Ahire,
1991; Anene, 1966). In 1872, the headquarters of the consulate was
moved to Old Calabar in what is now Nigeria.
In the Niger Delta, the commercial rivalry among the indigenous
potentates for trade on the one hand, and between the Nigerian
merchants and European merchants on the other, created a fertile
ground for the consolidation of British influence and extension of
colonial authority. Tamuno (1970) has argued that the role of the
British-inspired police forces in Nigeria were shaped by the nature
of European interests in the country and the reactions of the indigenous people to their activities. Put another way, Ahire (1991) contended that the struggles between indigenous states and British
imperial forces for commercial and political dominance provided
the context within which the police force emerged in this area.
In order to understand this dynamic, a closer observation of this
area is necessary. The delta region was occupied by a number of
indigenous states—Itsekiri, Ijaw, Bonny, Kalabari, Efik, and Ibibio
(Ahire, 1991). Most of these indigenous states’ political organizations
had no centralized authority structure. Each of the states was
located on the estuary of a river, and each took advantage of the
trade that flowed on these creeks. Each of the states was also
strategically located to play the middleman role in the hinterland
trade with the Europeans. The House system in the region also
meant that commercial preeminence was dictated by wealth and
success, as successful states or Houses could politically absorb and
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 33
subordinate the unsuccessful ones (Ahire, 1991; Dike, 1956; Ikime,
1968a, 1969, 1972; Jones, 1963).
This chaotic state of affairs gave British merchants and the colonial government an excuse to intervene. In the early 1850s the merchants began taking sides with rival chiefs, encouraging them to
attack one another. The effect of this rivalry was to paralyze the
indigenous leadership, opening the way for the British to assert
their own authority over commerce in the area (Ahire, 1991). Subsequently, the coastal merchants took away the authority of the
indigenous chiefs and established the first Court of Equity to regulate trade in 1854. The Court of Equity thus came into being entirely
on the initiative of the European and African merchants, the latter
being mainly the kings and chiefs of the communities concerned,
and often heads of Houses (Afigbo, 1972).
There is no doubt that John Beecroft capitalized on the contentious state of affairs to strengthen his position as consul. His
political activities were, in the words of Dike (1956: 130), “guided by
general principles.” Nigerian kings who favored the abolition of slavery, embraced Christianity, encouraged “legitimate commerce,” and
supported missionary enterprise were good kings. Those who stood
for the old status quo and resisted encroachment, whether they
dealt in slaves or not, were to him enemies of “progress” and “civilization” and were singled out for attack. This philosophy, coupled
with the deterioration of indigenous political authority in the area,
emboldened Beecroft to exile Bonny’s King William Dappa Pepple in
1854 (Ahire 1991; Anene, 1966).
Tamuno (1970) pointed out that in the preceding centuries, British
and other European traders had relied on the protection provided
by the West African chiefs who controlled the various precolonial
law enforcement agencies. Concerning this golden era, Afigbo (1972:
37–38) wrote: “In the palmy days of the city-states of the Oil Rivers
their indigenous political system had been able to cope with the
problem of maintaining law and order both among their own people
and between the latter and the trading community of Europeans.”
With the local authority in disarray, a power vacuum was created
34 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
that the Court of Equity could not fully fill. The establishment of a
consular police force to “maintain order” was, therefore, seen to be
not only necessary but justified.
Annesley’s Police (1890–1891)
With the abolition of the slave trade, the new emphasis on “legitimate commerce,” and the European race into Africa to procure raw
materials and open markets for European manufactured goods, created new points of contact between Africans and European merchants. With the advent of expanded trade came the Christian
missionaries. These new developments entailed not only points of
contact, but also new areas of friction between the groups, and
hence raised serious police problems.
Upon his appointment as consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra,
John Beecroft was charged with two specific roles (Tamuno, 1970).
The first instruction was for him “to prevent quarrels and misunderstandings between the African chiefs and British merchants in this
area.” Second, he was “to promote ‘legitimate trade’ and discourage
slave dealing” (2). Of course, he did his best, using the British gunboats of the Naval Squadron as his police force.
Beecroft was later replaced by Consul George Hartley, who was
subsequently instructed (in August 1873) to “maintain peace among
the native tribes and to develop the trade and resources of the
country” (Tamuno, 1970: 2). To meet this demand from the Foreign
Office, Hartley requested the authorization of £50,000–£60,000 a
year to raise a local constabulary force. This demand was not met
before his relief, acting Consul Henry Hamilton Johnston, clashed
with King Jaja of Opobo in 1887. The Jaja episode and other similar
frictions tilted the scales in favor of the consuls regarding their
urgent need for a police force to protect European merchants. This
proposal was, however, still under consideration when George
Annesley became the consul of the Oil Rivers.
It is important to note that in spite of the early halfhearted efforts
on the part of the Foreign Office to commit resources to Nigeria, the
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 35
rapid expansion of British commercial interests in this part of the
world was, by 1878, beginning to dictate the pace of British involvement in the affairs of the region. By this date, four British companies were operating in full force in the Niger valley. They were
the West African Company (Manchester), Messrs Alexander Miller
Brothers and Company (Glasgow), the Central African Trading Company (London), and James Pinnock and Company (Liverpool). These
were in addition to several other small firms and individuals running
private trade (Dike, 1956). Their presence would explain the need for
the government provision of armed security and police concerns of
the merchants.
In March 1890, and without waiting for approval from the Foreign
Office, Annesley quickly raised the first police force in the Oil Rivers
Protectorate (Tamuno, 1970). He described it as a small police force
and armed the force with short guns. In his explanation to the
Colonial Office, Annesley maintained that his action was necessary
“to prevent any possible atrocities by the natives” (Ahire, 1991: 38;
Tamuno, 1970: 4). In addition to this force of twenty men and one
sergeant, Annesley also urged the establishment of a Consular Constabulary of two hundred men. This request was pending in the Foreign Office when the administration of the Oil Rivers Protectorate
was entrusted to Claude MacDonald in 1891 (Tamuno, 1970).
On assuming office, MacDonald disbanded Annesley’s police,
which had been charged with the worst atrocities in the history of
the coastal states and had thus been dubbed “Annesley and his forty
thieves.” With the help of his deputy, Ralph D. Moor, a small force of
Hausas and Yorubas known as the Oil Rivers Irregulars, and a quasipolice force called Court Messengers were enlisted (Tamuno, 1970).
In 1892 the Oil Rivers Irregulars had a total strength of 165 men
and were a disciplined force armed with Snider carbines, the breach
loading rifles invented by an American, Jacob Snider, and adopted
by the British army in 1866.
The Court Messengers consisted of one sergeant, six corporals,
one lance corporal, and eighteen men. By 1898 their strength had
increased to 123. They were posted to various consular courts
36 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
within the protectorate and performed the duties of a military
police force and executed orders of the courts. Their other duties
included arresting and escorting prisoners and providing protection
for vice consuls as needed. Each of the detachments was supervised
by a vice consul from one of the Courts of Residence (Tamuno, 1970).
In 1893 the Oil Rivers Protectorate was renamed the Niger Coast
Protectorate with the addition of new territories fraudulently
acquired and MacDonald was the consular general (Tamuno, 1970).
In 1894 the strength of the police force was increased to 450, and by
1898 it had grown to 497 men (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970). From 1894
on, the official title of this force was the Niger Coast Protectorate
Constabulary.
MacDonald, and later Moor, frequently interchanged the roles of
this force between police and military. As a military force, the personnel were used to arrest or punish offending chiefs and their
people. Therefore, although a police force was established for the
maintenance of peace and order, it was their role as a military force
that was emphasized. Tamuno (1970) must have had this practice in
mind: “In seeking to maintain law and order in the Niger Coast Protectorate during the late 19th century, the government relied more
on military patrols and punitive expeditions than on any civil police”
(9). This protectorate constabulary, modeled on the Hausa Constabulary, existed for six years and featured prominently in the British
expedition to Benin in 1896 (Nigeria Police, 1981).
In 1900 the Northern and Southern protectorates of Nigeria were
proclaimed by the British government following the revocation of
the charter of the Royal Niger Company in 1899. In the South, the
Lagos Police Force and part of the Niger Coast Constabulary
became the Southern Nigeria Police Force in 1906, while the bulk
of the Niger Coast Constabulary formed the Southern Nigeria Regiment. In addition to their normal duties, the new police forces
were responsible for dealing with internal disturbances and external aggression, albeit [and intimidation of political opponents]
(Nigeria Police, 1981).
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 37
Ahire (1991) has suggested that the police force emerged in the
Niger Delta within the context of the growth and consolidation of
British colonial authority. This force and other militia also played
a crucial role in pacifying indigenous resistance in order to make
room for the activities of British merchants and missionaries and
the establishment of the local colonial state. In Ahire’s opinion the
police force (as established by the British) was not a better administrative machinery to maintain law and order in the Niger Coast
protectorate but was instead “an instrument of colonial expansion
which acted militarily to overthrow indigenous political authority”
(39).
Police Development in Northern Nigeria
In Northern Nigeria the development of the police was rather peculiar in nature. The Royal Niger Company, which was granted a royal
charter in 1886 by the British government, set up the Royal Niger
Constabulary in 1888 with headquarters in Lokoja to protect the
company’s installations along the banks of the River Niger (Nigeria
Police, 1981). In his inheritance of the fortunes of the RNC, Frederick
Lugard (who was the Northern Nigeria high commissioner) also
inherited the company’s paramilitary and police duties. From this
force Lugard picked fifty men whom he used to form the nucleus of
a civil police force. The rest were disbanded and incorporated into
the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970).
The Royal Niger Company constabulary at its formation in 1886
consisted of five officers, two African noncommissioned officers
(Non Commissioned Officers), and 413 privates. In 1898, shortly
before the RNC’s charter was revoked, the force had eighteen officers and NCOs and one thousand privates. Lugard merged this
force with the WAFF, which, he informed the colonial office, was
needed for “preserving order throughout the Protectorate” (Ahire,
1991, p. 40).
By 1902 Lugard had increased the strength of his civil police wing
from the initial fifty to 150, and by 1906 the force had thirty officers
38 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
and 1,180 men. In 1906 this police force was reorganized and redesignated the Northern Nigeria Constabulary. This constabulary was
not just a police force but, in the words of Lugard himself, a “backup
militia or a reserve unit of the WAFF” (Ahire, 1991: 40). In the same
year the duties of this police force were clearly spelled out to
include [but were not limited to]: “Investigating and detecting
crime, escorting Residents and other officials; prosecuting offenders; escorting prisoners; guarding gaols [ jails] and prisoners at work
outside the precincts of the prisons; serving summonses and executing warrants; patrolling, aiding and protecting revenue and customs officials; guarding and escorting goods; and suppressing slave
raiding” (Ahire, 1991: 40).
Ahire (1991) gave a clear picture of the role of “Lugard’s Police”:
“It can be said that while the WAFF undertook the conquest of the
Northern emirates the constabulary followed closely behind, and
generally helping to consolidate the conquest” (40). He continued:
“Provinces and districts were carved out under Residents and district officers respectively. With the coercive backing of the constabulary, these officers began the task of reorganizing the social
formation to be ‘self-financing’ and ‘self-governing’” (41).
Two years later, in 1908, Lugard reorganized his Northern Nigeria
Constabulary for two main reasons, with far-reaching implications
for policing in this region. First, Lugard recognized and acknowledged the existence within the indigenous society of an alternative
and viable police force. Second, he needed and introduced adjustments in the formal organization of colonial policing in order to
take advantage of this alternative police force (Ahire, 1991). Subsequent to this reorganization the constabulary was redesignated the
Northern Nigeria Police. Furthermore, the recognition of this alternative police system led to the establishment of “native” institutions,
including the Native Administration (NA) police forces to conduct
Indirect Rule (Ahire, 1991).
After the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914,
both police forces continued to operate separately. On 1 April 1930,
they were merged to form the present Nigeria Police Force with
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 39
headquarters in Lagos. This unified force was placed under the
command of an inspector general of police (Nigeria Police, 1981).
Police Professionalization
Overview
It has been established that the history of policing dates to England,
where the first modern metropolitan police force was created in
1829 to take over the role of security constables (Critchley, 1967;
Hart, 1951). The purpose then was purely to order maintenance and
control crime in the emergent large cities swelled by the “gains”
of the Industrial Revolution. There are various types of police, for
example, the city police, county sheriffs, state troopers, federal
police, and, in places like Nigeria, the national police and the Native
Authority Police. The nature and method of organization depend on
the social and economic needs of each country.
In the United States (unlike in England), the Texas Rangers,
formed in 1836, were an organization designed to fight as a quasimilitary unit maintained primarily for the protection of a predominantly rural environment (Holden, 1986). Though a formal city police
force was created in New York in 1844 with eight hundred officers
(and later in other cities), the order-maintenance aim was partially
to combat the growing militancy of the labor movement (Lynch
and Groves, 1989; Nalla and Newman, 1990). The order-maintenance
function of the police, therefore, has long been expected and
accepted. Added to the maintenance of order are other functions
such as law enforcement, providing emergency services, and crime
prevention and control.
In Nigeria the police were initially organized to intimidate and
subjugate the “natives,” and thereby enhance exploitation and servicing the capitalist needs of colonialism. The previous section
traced the origin and development of the Nigerian police, showing
the various stages of their transition toward professionalism. It is
essential to note that the process was gradual, spanning more than
40 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
five decades. This section will present a discussion of police professionalization in general and its lasting impact on the present Nigerian Police Force in particular.
Just as the concept of maintaining a police force originated in
England, efforts toward improvement and professionalization also
began in England, specifically dating back to the efforts of the Fielding brothers (Henry and John) in 1748 and 1754, respectively. Later, in
1829, Robert Peel succeeded in persuading the English Parliament to
pass the legislation that marked the beginning of the modern police.
The purpose of this transformation was to provide a more efficient
service.
From the onset it can be inferred that education and training constitute the bulk of the remedy for the problem of professionalization. While the entry-level qualification in Britain has varied from
a high school diploma to a four-year college degree, in the United
States a minimum requirement of a two-year college diploma is fast
becoming the norm. In fact, various agencies and commissions, particularly the federal police agencies, have been insisting on a baccalaureate degree as a minimum requirement for entry into the
service. According to some sociologists (Bressler, 1967; Saunders,
1970), university education provides ethical and moral indoctrination that legitimizes existing power arrangements and reinforces
appropriate attitudes for sustenance of democratic institutions and
peaceful coexistence of diverse population groups. To Bressler, education serves as “a constituent element in all scientific, professional,
and managerial training and as such is presumably directly instrumental in enhancing occupational competencies. In one sense general education is the most efficient form of occupational training.
Rapid change is hostile to narrow expertise and a curriculum that
emphasizes breadth and flexibility may better equip students to
meet unpredictable vocational demands (50). Saunders agreed that
these functions are especially relevant in the case of the police,
“who bear a unique responsibility for maintaining democratic institutions” and for “assuring the peaceful coexistence of diverse popu-
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 41
lation groups.” Furthermore, police work is obviously susceptible to
“unpredictable vocational demands” (82).
In Nigeria applicants can join the police force at three levels:
the constable, the cadet inspector, and the cadet assistant superintendent cadres. Candidates for cadet assistant superintendent are
required to have a four-year university degree. Candidates for the
cadet inspector level are expected to have the minimum qualification of the general certificate of education, ordinary level, or high
school diploma, with passes in at least four subjects including English and math. Candidates for recruit constables are required to
meet a lower standard of education (Nigeria Police, 1981).
Although Nigeria is the focus of this discussion, police professionalization in Great Britain and the United States has been discussed
briefly to draw attention to the trend toward the improvement of
the police in the latter two countries. This no doubt may shed
some light on the evaluation of the nature of colonial police and
efforts toward improvement of the well-being of Nigerian police
officers vis-a-vis their “establishment to enforce colonial repressive
law, order, ‘peace,’ and to protect British ‘honour and interest,’ and
to ensure by ruthless means if necessary that the various taxes
imposed on the poor and oppressed colonized peoples were collected” (Alemika, 1988: 166).
Professionalization During the Colonial Era
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Advisory
Committee in 1965 confirmed the widely held belief that further
education, quality training, and refresher courses are the hallmarks
of an efficient police force. They stated: “Generally, it is conceded
that today’s law enforcement officer has a need for higher education. It is also generally agreed that within the next few years
law enforcement officers will find higher education imperative…
The law enforcement officer is required to meet all kinds of people
and innumerable kinds of situations (Saunders, 1970: 83). Based on
42 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
this observation the committee believed that good education and
improved training are prerequisites for the officer to:
(a) be equipped to make good value judgments;
(b) be able to maintain his perspective;
(c) be able to understand the underlying causes of human
behavior;
(d) be able to communicate clearly and precisely;
(e) possess leadership qualities;
(f) be knowledgeable of skills;
(g) be able to understand the criminal code and know when
a criminal offense has in fact been committed; and
(h) know his position in the total framework of society, the
rights as well as the obligations of the citizenry, and the dignity of man.
The Lagos Police
In Lagos, Police Ordinance No. 10 of 1895, dated 27 December 1895,
established the Lagos Police as a civil police force (Tamuno, 1970).
Two years later Police Ordinance No. 14 of 1897 declared the Lagos
Police Force to be “an armed force.” Its broad general duties
included the prevention and detection of crime, the repression of
internal disturbance, defense of the colony, and protection against
external aggression (Tamuno, 1970).
Although the sole purpose for the establishment of this force
(independent of the armed constabulary) was to civilianize the personnel and make it citizen friendly, the change was in practice
cosmetic and bureaucratic. Most of the rank and file were former
members of the largely military constabulary. Its first commissioner
(or commander), Captain J. D. Hamilton, was a military officer who
attended a course of instruction in civil police work at Scotland
Yard and the Royal Irish Constabulary. His successor, Captain W. R.
Reeve-Tucker, was also a former military officer without any police
training. These facts serve to illustrate that the tone expected of the
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 43
new police force must invariably reflect that of its officers. In this
case it was militaristic.
Until 1897 the stipulated qualification for assistant commissioners
of police in Lagos was “a sound knowledge of drill” rather than previous experience in police duties. Other qualifications were a clear
and practical knowledge of criminal law, as well as a sober judgment and great personal energy (Tamuno, 1970). Between 1895 and
1899 overseas training for African officers of the Lagos Police was
implemented before being stopped by Governor MacGregor after
only two commissioned officers and six NCOs received overseas
training by then. That put an end to the professional training of
Nigerian colonial officers for a while. Professional training resumed
when indigenous police training colleges were opened up in Lagos
in 1921, in Kaduna in 1922, in Enugu in 1932, and in Maiduguri in 1973
(Tamuno, 1970: 59; Nigeria Police, 1981).
Another area where some effort was made at professionalization
was in the police detective service. In the 1870s the first six detectives were appointed by Alfred Moloney. In 1896 Assistant Police
Commissioner Carroll urged the establishment of a Detective
Department on a more efficient basis. Although this department
performed wonderfully well under Assistant Superintendent F. Colley Green, the lack of overseas specialized training and limited
resources in skill and equipment hampered operations to its full
potential (Tamuno, 1970).
In appointment to the officer cadre of the colonial police, the
British held a monopolized preserve. Ahire (1991) observed that
appointments were made either from the police forces of other
British colonies, other departments of the Colonial Civil Service in
Nigeria, or from the Armed and Civil Services of the United Kingdom. The officer corps of all the British colonial police was under
a unified system whereby officers were freely transferred from one
force to another, albeit to ensure that openings were not filled up
with qualified Nigerians.
The Annual Report on the Police Force for 1936 showed that all
the forty senior officers appointed to the police in Nigeria between
44 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
1926 and 1936 came from either a nonpolice department in the
United Kingdom or from among police service officers of other
overseas British colonies. Conspicuously significant was the fact
that not even a single police officer was transferred from the British
police. This policy was based on the fallacious assumption that the
training and orientation of the British police was unsuitable for service in the colonies (Ahire, 1991). The only appointees who came
directly from Britain were men with a military training background
in the armed forces or ex-officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary
(RIC) (Ahire, 1991).
It has been pointed out (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970) that the major
reason the colonial government favored RIC training and ex-military
officers was because the RIC program provided at that time the
best training for the conditions expected in the British dependencies overseas. Historically the RIC training had been adapted to the
conditions in Ireland which, according to Tamuno (1970: 45), had a
“heritage of rebellion and opposition to British rule for many centuries” (45). In anticipation of similar opposition from the colonies,
the RIC course was recommended for the police in the colonies.
Ahire (1991) has earlier argued that the raison d’être for the establishment of the police was to intimidate or “pacify the large number
of very backward pagans who were in persistent defiance of colonial
authority” (41). For the same reason he argued that “it is not very
hard to appreciate why training in Ireland was deemed essential for
all Nigerian colonial police officers” (55). The inherent contradiction
in the colonial policy justified the exploitation charges heaped on
colonial motives. For example, William MacGregor, George Chardin
Denton, and Harry Johnstone in succession discouraged the training of Nigerian officers overseas as it “amounted to a waste of
time and money” (Tamuno, 1970: 32). At the same time MacGregor
and Johnstone specifically requested two European assistant commissioners of police with RIC training background and experience
(Tamuno, 1970).
In fact, the Colonial Office’s discrimination policy was very overt.
It flatly denied Nigerian officers any overseas training that would
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 45
help in the process of professionalization. On the other hand, in a
circular letter dated September 1907, the British secretary of state
for the colonies made training at the RIC Depot, Dublin, compulsory
for British police officers in the police establishment of the British
West Indies and of East and West Africa (Tamuno, 1970).
The Southern Nigeria Police Force
Until the 1900s nothing was done in the protectorate of Southern
Nigeria in the direction of consolidating the police force or offering
further training. In fact, the relative peace that obtained in the
Yoruba hinterland after 1893, and the iron-fisted control maintained
by the Royal Niger Company’s armed brigands in the Eastern states,
gave Ralph Moor enough peace not to bother with rushing for police
reorganization. For nearly two years after taking control over the
area from the RNC, Moor had a force of only forty civil police or
Niger District Police he had inherited from the RNC, in addition
to the corps of Court Messengers whom he used as guards and
escorts.
In reality Moor delayed a full-scale police reorganization in the
Southern protectorate to enable completion of the already-planned
military expedition against the slave-trading people of Arochukwu
(known as ndi Aro or Aros) and their opposition to British penetration into Igbo hinterland markets. So, while Moor favored the establishment of a civil police force in principle, this had to wait till the
end of the Aro expedition, which began in November 1901 and was
over nearly as soon as it started.
In his Police Proclamation (No. 4 of 1902) released on 26 February
1902, Moor set out his police reorganization plan with the title of
“Southern Nigeria Police.” It was to be headed by a British inspector assisted by British and African officers. The status, powers, functions, discipline, and privileges of the Southern Nigeria Police were,
according to Tamuno (1970), similar to those of the Lagos Police.
The new head of the command was former Lieutenant J. L. R.
Parry, who had a previous military record in Canada and Southern
46 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
Nigeria but, was without any police experience. Between 1904 and
1905, Parry was assisted by two British assistant inspectors and
three African assistant inspectors. As in the Lagos Police, discrimination was practiced regarding the salaries and status of the British
and African assistant inspectors, despite similarities in their titles
and qualifications (Tamuno, 1970).
In 1906 the Lagos Police and the Southern Nigeria Police were
amalgamated into the Southern Nigeria Police Force. Johnstone, the
former commissioner of the Lagos Police, became its head with the
title of inspector general, and Parry, the former head of the Southern Nigeria Police, became the deputy inspector general in 1908.
As of December 1906, the nine British personnel in the force were
of gazetted ranks, while the bulk of the 1,043 African members of
the force were of lower ranks. Of these men, 555 were Yoruba, 393
Igbo, sixty Bini, sixteen Ijaw, nine Itsekiri, and five each of Hausa and
Kroomen (Colonial Secretary’s Office, CSO 1.15.11, 17 March 1907).
The 1906 amalgamation ushered in only two changes. The first
was the unification of the command structure. The second was the
increase in police establishments to cope with the vast area to be
patrolled. Other than these, there was no spectacular change since
the role of the police continued to be the performance of semimilitary duties.
In the area of professional and personal well-being, available evidence (Tamuno, 1970) indicates that the “color bar syndrome” that
infected the Lagos Police caught up with the new Southern Nigeria
Police Force as well. This is hardly surprising given that the new
head was the former boss of the Lagos Police. Accordingly, the
“color bar and racial discrimination played a large part in limiting
the opportunities of competent African police officers during the
first four decades of the present century” (48).
For the NCOs and lower ranks, the existing facilities for their
training continued to be inadequate. With overseas training
scrapped, the emphasis had been on local in-service training geared
toward drill, the prevention and detection of crime, and general
police duties. After May 1906, the only achievement of the force
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 47
was its compilation and publication of the “Constables’ Catechism,”
which summarized (for the benefit of literate policemen) the general
police duties and the most common offenses in the combined territories, the colony of Lagos and protectorate of Southern Nigeria
(Ahire, 1991; Alemika, 1988; Tamuno, 1970). At about this same time,
the eight British police officers in the Southern Nigeria Police Force
attended the obligatory RIC course in Ireland at the expense of
Nigerian Police funds (Tamuno, 1970).
Northern Nigeria Police
The declaration of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1900 by
Frederick Lugard marked the beginning of effective British occupation of the region. Between 1900 and 1903, Lugard had completed
the conquest of the whole region and then turned to the delegation
of police and political powers in the region under the system of indirect administration.
However, the peculiar nature of Northern Nigeria always necessitated a dual form of government—one state and the other traditional. Similarly, the police system in the colonial era reflected this
division for administrative convenience. That is, the Hausa-Fulani
emirs were allowed considerable control over their local police, the
Dogarai, in their respective areas of jurisdiction.
For a start, Lugard took fifty men from the Royal Niger Company
Constabulary to form the nucleus of the civil police under his new
protectorate administration. He appointed J. F. Carroll as his first
head of Civil Police and Prisons in 1900. Upon the sudden death of
Carroll in the same year, Lugard appointed Albert L. de Morley Mynn
as the new police commissioner. Mynn served in this position until
1903, when he was replaced by Major A. Bain of the Royal Engineers.
A year after the establishment of the civil police, Lugard increased
its strength to one hundred. By 1902 a further increase put the total
police strength at 150 men. In addition, he established an armed
constabulary force of twenty-nine officers and one thousand NCOs
and constables in 1903. As in the Southern protectorate, all officers
48 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
of the new constabulary were required to take the RIC course before
or after appointment in the force (Tamuno, 1970).
Between 1903 and 1908, the Northern Nigeria Constabulary went
through a series of internal reorganizations. Part of the reorganization was the delegation to the traditional emirs the power to police
their own respective areas. Through official encouragement of the
local police, the Dogarai, the administration hoped to reduce the
expenditure on the British-created police. In this manner Lugard
laid the foundation of what later became known as the Local
Authority Police, which the emirs used to enforce local laws and collect taxes imposed by the government.
As of December 1908, the total African manpower of the Northern
Nigeria Constabulary consisted of 240 Hausas, 216 Yorubas, 102
Beriberis, fifty-three Fulanis, and twenty-five Nupes. There were
also fifty-four other members of the force whose ethnic origins
were not determined. Other changes in 1908 included the changing
of the title of the head of the force from commissioner to inspector
general as of 1 April 1908. Furthermore, the title of the force itself
was changed from Northern Nigeria Constabulary to Northern
Nigeria Police.
In his speech at Sokoto on 21 March 1903 during the installation of
a new sultan (after the conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate), Lugard set
the tone of his new government. He expressed his intention to use
the existing feudal social arrangements to impose his own brand of
tyranny on Northern Nigeria. In the speech he declared: “The Fulani
in the old times under Dan Fodio conquered this country. They took
the right to rule over it, to levy taxes, to depose Kings and to create
Kings. They in turn have by defeat lost their rule which has come
into the hands of the British. All these things which I have said the
Fulani by conquest took the right to do now pass to the British”
(Kirk-Greene, 1965: 43).
The exploitative imperialist agenda of Lugard is unmistakable. By
declaring Northern Nigeria a British property by right of conquest,
Ahire (1991) argued, Lugard clearly presented colonialism as a business venture with inputs and returns. The colonial police forces,
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 49
asserted Alemika (1988: 165), were therefore organized and oriented
to behave as occupation forces—“ruthless, brutal, corrupt, dishonest, and prone to brutalizing the colonized peoples and vandalizing
their properties” (Ikime, 1977; Tamuno, 1970). The compulsory RIC
training was, therefore, meant to inculcate a military style of discipline and regimentation to serve the capitalist needs of exploitation
and colonialism.
1914 Amalgamation
The political amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Nigeria
Protectorates in 1914 brought about a central government under
a governor general. The Northern and Southern Police commands
were still under the inspectors general of the two respective
regions. In effect, this development gave Lugard the sole authority
for determining the future of policing in Nigeria.
Shortly after the amalgamation, World War I broke out. In the first
exercise of his expanded authority, Lugard ordered the mobilization
of the entire police force of the Southern Provinces to join the war.
Four months later the forces of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria
were equally mobilized to fight the Germans. In terms of professionalization, it may be argued (by British apologists) that forceful
mobilization to fight another country’s war was the only successful practical intensive training offered to the Nigerian police. That
the lives of these officers were neither insured by the British government, nor were the families of the dead ones compensated, is an
issue that is best reserved for another day.
Nevertheless, on 26 July 1915, a new medal, the African Police
Medal for Meritorious Service was introduced by the British Crown.
This medal was reserved for African NCOs and other ranks who
distinguished themselves in zeal and gallantry [albeit on the battlefield], but not in police work (Tamuno, 1970). The fallacy of the
whole exercise was the idea that it was a waste of money to send
African officers for training abroad, but a cost-effective measure to
send them untrained to fight on the battlefield against profession-
50 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
ally trained soldiers. Needless to point out, they had to fight without
extra remuneration.
In August 1917 Lugard’s administration enacted Police Ordinance
Cap. 32, which theoretically established the Southern Police Force
for the Colony and Southern Provinces and the Northern Police
Force for the Northern P: rovinces, no further practical changes
took place in the institutional organization of the police until 1921
(Tamuno, 1970: 58). By that year, a police depot was opened in Obalande (Lagos) to train recruits in Lagos and the Native Authority
policemen for the former Western region. A similar training school
was established in Kaduna in 1922, and by 1929 the Kaduna school
extended its efforts to training Native Authority Police NCOs, the
Dogarai forces (Tamuno, 1970: 60; Nigeria Police, 1981).
In the same period, from 1921 to 1923, Governor Hugh Clifford
implemented a housing development plan initiated by C. W. Duncan,
who in 1919 became the inspector general of the Southern Police
Force. The plan called for the building of residential barracks for
serving police officers. By 1925 living quarters were provided for 40
percent of rank-and-file police officers in Lagos, and the remaining
60 percent received a monthly lodging or housing allowance with
their pay. The barracks system was later extended to all provinces
(Tamuno, 1970: 59).
The Police Reserve Training Depot was opened in Enugu in 1932,
and by 1936 all recruits formerly trained at the Lagos Depot were
transferred to Enugu. In all the police training depots—Kaduna,
Lagos, and Enugu—the central object of police training remained
the inculcation of the military style of discipline and regimentation.
The Nigerian Police Standing Orders unequivocally emphasized this
plural objective as reported by Ahire (1991: 57): “[E]mphasis is put on
drill as the means of instilling obedience, discipline, and self-control. Officers and men are required to model their drill standards on
those for the military infantry, as the force is itself a semi-military
organization… It is essential that every constable should be able to
use his rifle with a fair amount of accuracy, for if a man is totally
unable to shoot, he is useless to the force.” Ahire further contended
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 51
that there was, in fact, very little difference between police training
in colonial Nigeria and that of the troops, as most of the policemen
were old army men, most of whom had distinguished war service
records.
The social natures of the North and the South dictated a variation
in the nature of the little civil training offered the recruits in the two
training depots. The Enugu Police School was required to train the
police of the Southern Provinces and township (urban) police in the
Northern Provinces. It was also to strive to improve their standard
of English literacy. The Kaduna Police School, on the other hand,
was expected to train the men required to perform the more rudimentary duties in the “primitive” areas, especially in the Northern
Provinces.
Events emanating from the end of the European World War I, and
colonial, social, and economic circumstances necessitated a slight
modification in the training program of the training schools from
the late 1920s. Some aspects of civil policing were incorporated to
accommodate the social diversity and political needs of the country.
This period (circa 1929) coincided with the serious series of protests
against the high-handedness of the colonial apparatus: the anti-tax
riots in Warri Province, 1927–1928 (Ikime, 1966); the Aba Women’s
riot of 1929 (Afigbo, 1966); the Egba tax riot of 1918 (Afigbo et al.,
1986); to name but a few. Overall, the invention of minute aspects
of civil policing did not imply the abandonment of the paramilitary
aspect of training (Ahire, 1991).
About this time, attention was being given to providing new training facilities overseas for British police officers beginning in 1921.
Following the Irish Nationalist struggle after the Easter uprising of
1916, the RIC training gave way to the Royal Ulster Constabulary
course at the Newtownards Depot in Northern Ireland. The British
Nigerian officers were sent for courses at Newtownards, to courses
of instruction for the senior dominion and colonial police officers
at Scotland Yard, and the Peel House advanced courses of lectures
on criminal law, methods of identification, pathology, toxicology,
52 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
prison administration, traffic problems, and other subjects dealing
with police duties (Tamuno, 1970: 60).
In the provincial sphere certain model but limited reforms took
place. The Kaduna Intelligence Bureau expanded to combine the
duties of a criminal records office with those of political intelligence
from the 1920s. It ran this combined function until 1933, and later
merged with the Fingerprint Bureau of the Criminal Investigation
Division in Lagos (Tamuno, 1970: 61).
The Southern Police Force, meanwhile, took a number of steps
toward reform and expansion. With a staff comprised of four European superintendents and ten Nigerian corporals, it opened up the
Motor Traffic Section of the Southern Police Force. Their main goals
were to control dangerous driving, to regulate licensing, and to discourage vehicle overloading and other related items (hence the origin of the Nigeria police acceptance of bribes at checkpoints). The
Southern Police Force in 1925 also took over from the Customs
Department the preventive work on the Western frontier (also the
origin of the Nigeria Customs acceptance of bribes at checkpoints
and border crossings). A similar function was extended to the Eastern frontier in 1928 (Tamuno, 1970: 62).
By Police Ordinance No. 25 of 1928, which amended Police Ordinance Cap. 32 of 1917, the Fire Brigade became an integral part of
the Southern Police Force (hence the origin of the Nigeria Fire Service’s failure to respond to fire emergencies because of an absence
of bribes). Under the same Ordinance No. 25, the inspector general
of the Southern Police Force became the chief fire commissioner
(Tamuno, 1970: 62). The Southern Police Force also continued to
police the Nigeria Railway until the general manager of the Nigeria
Railway demanded the creation of a separate railway police.
The 1930 Police Amalgamation
The amalgamation of the Southern Nigerian Police Force and the
Northern Nigerian Police Force on 1 April 1930 resulted in the creation of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) under one unified com-
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 53
mand. In reality the exercise was merely a cosmetic bureaucratic
change that did not materially alter the existing powers, duties, discipline, or privileges of the policemen. The new police establishment provided for a single inspector general and a deputy inspector
general. The Northern and Southern Provinces each had an assistant inspector general under whom were seventy-six commissioners and assistant commissioners, and six superintendents of police.
Of course, most of the officers were British, and the rest were NCOs
and other ranks (Tamuno, 1970: 63ff).
While the police amalgamation has been widely regarded as one
of the most significant changes in Nigerian police history, it was
really a change without substance. If anything, it led to heightened
resentment of the colonial police by the emerging African elites. At
the root of the resentment were the color bar and racial discriminatory policies of the colonial government that had not only banned
Nigerians from overseas training, but also from promotion to the
higher ranks in the force irrespective of competency and years of
service.
In the administrative field, the NPF asked to be allowed to give
up some odd jobs it had previously undertaken for the government.
Major Alan Saunders, the inspector general (1936–1937), was the first
to ask to be relieved of his ex-officio duties as the central registrar of licenses, sheriff, principal immigration officer, and inspector of weights and measures. Additionally, he requested that the
Lagos Town Council be entrusted with the administration of the
fire-fighting services. These extraneous services and commitments,
according to him, consumed too much valuable police time
(Tamuno, 1970: 125).
In 1937 Saunders relieved the NPF of responsibilities related to
police-escorts for government agencies and private companies. In
its place he recommended the employment of supernumerary constables. Then, in 1946, responsibility for preventive services in the
Eastern and Western Provinces was transferred from NPF to the
Customs and Excise Department. A similar exercise was to follow in
the Northern Provinces later (Tamuno, 1970: 127).
54 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
When in the late 1940s and early 1950s public corporations like
the Nigerian Railways and Nigerian Ports Authority began to assume
the financial responsibility for policing their properties, the NPF
was further relieved of all those encumbrances (Tamuno, 1970: 127).
The police also gave up their control of motor licensing and the central Motor Registry between 1950 and 1953. The police were relieved
of the responsibility to control weights and measures between 1955
and 1958. This duty was rightly transferred to the Ministry of Commerce.
Similarly, in 1960, the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs relieved
the police of the burdensome responsibility for immigration and
passport control, which the police had performed since 1933.
Between 1964 and 1965, the registrars of the High Courts of the Federation took over the duties of sheriff from the inspector general.
In effect the police ceased providing court bailiffs and ended their
supervision of executions carried out by public hangmen.
In 1954, following calls made by Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1951 and A. O.
Ogedengbe in 1953, the decision was made to establish the Women’s
Police Branch (WPB) of the NPF. Their initial responsibilities were
investigation duties with the Railway Police and at the headquarters
in matters concerning offenses involving women and children.
Later, much of their attention went to the establishment of juvenile
welfare centers, motor traffic duties, street hawking control, and
station desk duties. This early batch of female officers did not
receive training in firearms and riot drill, as policewomen never participated in riot duties. By 1962 there was a total of 170 policewomen
in the NPF, with only two coming from Northern Nigeria (Tamuno,
1970: 137; Nigeria Police, 1981).
Other areas where some limited development took place in the
colonial era include the first-aid services rendered under the auspices of the Saint Johns Ambulance Brigade, which began in 1954.
This became a full-fledged Police Medical Service in 1975. The Police
Band was formed in 1920 and has since grown to include a military
band. It also trained the bands of other services. The Transport
Branch was founded in 1950 as the Force Transport Unit, and the
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 55
following year the first Police Workshop was opened at the NPF
Headquarters (Nigeria Police, 1981).
The Marine Branch, which was formed in 1891 with a sergeant
and twelve men, was modified and improved between the 1930s and
1950s. Instead of the dugout canoes previously used, they became
equipped with Brimabright dinghies fitted with outboard engines.
In 1950 the Signals Branch of the NPF was established, but with only
four walkie-talkie stations.
On balance it might be safe to acknowledge great strides made in
the field of the establishment of the police as a legitimate agency
of social and crime control. At the same time, the slow pace of
improvement on the part of the colonial masters (who were guided
primarily by their desire for profit) casts their image in “red” on
the balance sheet. They must be found wanting, as they did very
little too late to professionalize the NPF. This below-average performance lends some credibility to the allegations of maladministration
leveled
by
modern
researchers
of
the
colonial
economy—Tamuno (1970), Rodney (1972), Danns (1982), Alemika
(1988), Ahire (1991)—and a host of others.
Alemika (1988) charged that the development of English-type
police in Nigeria “reflects the piecemeal and chaotic process of
colonial theft (conquests) and subordination of the precolonial
nations in the territory between 1861 and 1906” (163). Since the colonial state ultimately rested on force, he argued that it relied on the
police to maintain its stranglehold in spite of opposition from the
colonial peoples. Tamuno (1970), Crowder (1978a), Ikime (1977), and
Ahire (1991) all contend that colonial ambitions and objectives were
(to varying degrees during the phase of colonialism in Nigeria) prosecuted through organized governmental violence, vandalism, and
plunder on the part of the colonizers.
From their inception the Protectorate Police (later Nigerian
Police) were placed under the directive of the political officers. This
practice, Ahire (1991) argued, was necessary for the efficient extraction of economic surplus from producers who were not fully proletarianized, and to deal with recurrent popular protests against
56 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
unpopular and perfidious colonial policies. Similarly all sundry
administrative, coercive, and surveillance organs of colonialism
(police, military, prisons, courts, tribunals, “native” authorities, residents, and district officers) were established and sustained to prosecute, promote, and defend British imperialistic interests in Nigeria
as elsewhere in Africa (Alemika, 1988).
Britain’s security in Nigeria began with its increased involvement
in the self-imposed task of protecting the lives and property of
the indigenous people, the European merchants and other businessmen, and Christian missionaries. After the annexation of Lagos,
the security of the colony became so difficult to maintain that
McCoskry wrote the Colonial Office for permission to establish a
consular guard (police of some sort). According to him, “Laws will
have to be made and administered… we have no police, no jails, nor
other efficient mode of punishment for offenders” (14). A force of
about two hundred strong was therefore needed to give the new
government “due influence in the disturbed countries” (Tamuno,
1970: 14). In the Oil Rivers Protectorate in 1890, Annesley organized a
small police force in order “to prevent any possible atrocities by the
natives” (4).
These pretenses at moral sanctity and the claimed desire for the
preservation of law and order were debunked by the nature and
manner of the composition of the early constabularies. Ahire (1991),
Danns (1982), and Alemika (1988) have convincingly argued that law
and order maintenance and crime control were not factors in the
British aims of establishing a police force in Nigeria. The same argument applies to the failure of the British to professionalize the
police; thereby they created a lethargic force whose stock-in-trade
was (and still is) oppression of the poor, bribery and corruption, and
protection of the rich and corrupt officials.
The preference by early colonial administrators for Hausa soldiers
in ethnically Yoruba Lagos colony clearly reveals the colonial
motive. Alemika (1988) pointed out that gruesome law and order
enforcement was sustained by the colonists through the use of
divide-and-rule strategy. Under this strategy, policemen were
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 57
recruited and then stationed in areas where they were alien and
detested. The inevitable mutual hostility fostered by this practice
sustained the colonial needs of exploitation. This grievious misstep
in the foundational base of the Nigerian Police Force makes a good
case today for the immediate development of community policing to
help the country to recover from years lost to the proverbial pestilence of locusts, and for the citizens to experience the benefits of
what Wiatrowski and Pino (2016) called “democratic policing.”
In 1863, for example, Governor Henry Freeman wrote to the duke
of New Castle to elaborate on the advantages of such a skewed practice. He argued that by raising a police force for Lagos that consisted of Hausa Muslims and ex-slaves, who were usually detested
by the Yoruba, it made it difficult for a rapport to develop between
the police and the people of Lagos. Similarly, in 1893 Governor Denton, in a letter to the Colonial Office in London, stated: “In our
Hausa Force we have a body of men dissociated from the countries
[Yoruba communities] immediately around Lagos both by birth and
religion, and who are as a matter of fact the hereditary enemies
of the Yorubas. This is such an enormous advantage in any interior
complications that I should be sorry to see it abandoned if it be possible to obtain a supply of recruits in any other way (Colonial Secretary’s Office, CSO 1.1.14, 2 August 1893).
It is obvious from these correspondences that the British had
ulterior motives behind their actions. Danns (1982) asserted that the
use of nonlocal recruits in colonial police forces was to emphasize
that the role of the police was not to protect the community, but to
execute the will of the colonial state. No wonder no effort was made
to train the Nigerian officers overseas. The quasi-military training
and nature of the colonial police, according to Ahire (1991), further
buttresses this point.
Alemika (1988) has argued that the law and order maintenance
and riot suppression functions of the police were emphasized to
the exclusion of social services. In effect, therefore, the colonial
police forces were organized and oriented to “behave as occupation
forces—ruthless, brutal, corrupt, dishonest and prone to brutalizing
58 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
the colonized peoples and vandalising their properties” (p. 165).
Undoubtedly, the preoccupations of the colonial police were not the
promotion and enforcement of just laws, the rule of law, natural justice and equity, and the security of the vast majority of Nigeria as
colonial officials and their apologists have often claimed (Ahire, 1991;
Alemika, 1988; Ikime, 1977; Tamuno, 1970).
Another reality deciphered from the nature of the colonial police
was its total disregard for the sanctity of precolonial structures and
social institutions. Neither was the uniqueness of precolonial societies and nations considered, nor were the distinctions among the
nations and peoples considered in fashioning out the type of policing desirable for their protection. Rather, according to Ahire (1991),
the police in Nigeria were used to subjugate indigenous societies
and to subordinate them to the political authority of the colonial
state and its interests.
In his analysis of the role of the police in development, Bayley
(1969) maintained that the police should be first and foremost studiously nonviolent and should not operate across the grain of what
people want them to enforce. The police also must close the gap
that may grow in any society between those who enforce the law
and those against whom it is enforced. They must recruit from every
geographical region of the country and from every social stratum or
group, and by so doing can help to create that modicum of national
unity that undergirds any democratic regime. Finally, Bayley also
suggested that while a national democratic government requires
a growing modern economy saturated with increased specialization of functions, its police should recruit and train both men and
women who will be able to fit comfortably into any technological
society and who will be better able to use modern technology for
policing.
1. The exaggeration by the police of evidence in court.
2. The use of unnecessary violence.
3. Fatuousness in dealing with public demonstrations [and breaking labor strikes].
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 59
4. Ineptitude in handling the public on occasions of public
demonstration.
5. Incivility to members of the public.
6. Unnecessary delay in attending to complaints.
7. The lack of courtesy shown by the police in discharging such
duties as traffic control, making arrests, and taking statements
(218).
According to Ekpenyong (1987), in addition to the inherited colonial
mentality, poor educational standards, the lack of appropriate professional qualification, the recruitment of low-skilled demobilized
soldiers, and the low salary scale, which has lagged behind the
national minimum, are allegedly at the root of the misdeeds of the
police and consequent public antipathy toward them.
Postcolonial Police Professionalization
The political developments following the securing of independence
from Britain in 1960 resulted in some significant changes in the
affairs of the Nigerian police. First there was the Independence
Constitution, and later the Republican Constitution of 1963. With
the excision of the Southern Cameroons following the Britishrigged plebiscite to have a separate government from Nigeria’s, the
inspector general [of the Nigeria Police Force] from October 1961
ceased to control the NPF detachment in the Cameroons. Also,
when Nigeria became a republic in 1963, the inspector general
became the chief police executive of the North, East, West, and the
newly created Midwest regions. A new commissioner was appointed
to command the NPF in the new Midwest state (Tamuno, 1970).
It may be right to assert that the 1960 Independence and 1963
Republican developments set the pace for most of the developmental changes that took place in Nigeria. Much of the “professionalization” of the police in Nigeria also came after its 1960 independence.
The NPF inherited from colonial Britain after independence was an
unprofessional force inundated with junior-ranking or ungazetted
officers of African descent. At independence it was a national police
60 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
force and the only force operating throughout the nation, which
later became the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but with a centralized
police force contrary to principles of federalism.
In 2020 President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Nigerian Police
Bill into law to provide a funding framework, in accordance with
other federal institutions, for more training, professionalism, transparency, and police-community collaboration in crime fighting. This
does not say anything that is new and may be a way for the government to dodge the intense demand for community policing.
What does a funding framework in accordance with other federal
institutions mean when the police have always been funded in
accordance with other federal institutions as if the country is under
a unitary system of government? There are no state police and no
local government police under Nigerian federalism and the police
state is reluctant to allow the communities to police themselves
democratically as would be the case in a true federalism. If professionalism and training mean sending Nigerian police officers to
be trained in racist countries like the United States and the United
Kingdom where people of African descent have led a global movement to demand the simple fact that “black lives matter,” then there
is cause for alarm in Nigeria and across Africa because professionalism could coexist with the professionalization of police abuse of
power.
More funding toward better remuneration for police officers to
reduce bribery as a source of income is important, but funding
for more military-grade weapons with which to kill more innocent
people is counterproductive. However, better remuneration packages may not reduce corruption given that the politicians have
some of the best remuneration packages in the world and yet they
remain corrupt. More important than funding is the freedom of the
cmmunmities to police themselves democratically while holding the
police accountable for their vast powers.
Even if “transparency” in the Nigerian Police Force means the
admission of wrongdoing and the award of huge amounts of money
to victims of the abuse of human rights and the massacre of NigeHistory and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 61
rians by the colonial-style policing, there should still be room for
community autonomy and democratic self-policing instead of only
promising police-community collaboration in fighting crime. The
government should not be afraid of supporting community policing
that is autonomous from the Nigerian Police Force in a truly democratic federal system of government unless it remains neocolonial.
The Police Act 2020 provides for private investigators to be
approved by the police and registered along with private investigation schools for the first time in Nigeria, in line with what is
obtained in other parts of the world. But private eyes do not make
community policing. The Police Act also prohibits the police from
arresting people for civil disputes that are better settled through
civil suits or in the community. The act provides for the right to
remain silent and the right to a lawyer that could be provided
through free legal aid. The police commander is required to report
cases of all arrestrs to the magistrates every month and detainees
are given the right to bail within twenty-four hours. The police are
authorized to fingerprint suspects and take their photographs but
if they refuse, the police will apply to the court to compel the suspect to submit. These are normal police practices around the world
but they appear to be giving more powers to the police in Nigeria
instead of empowring the communities to be self-governing democratically. Still lacking is a framework for effective community policing in Nigeria
The modern NPF still maintains a monolithic and centralized
management structure under the inspector general of police (IGP).
The NPF Headquarters is located at the Federal Capital Territory in
Abuja and serves as the operational and administrative base of the
IGP. It is organized into six departments (each headed by a deputy
inspector general, or DIG, of police) namely:
• A Department: Administration
• B Department: Operations (including Signals and Communications)
• C Department: Works
62 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
• D Department: Criminal Investigations
• E Department: Training
• F Department: Planning, Research, and Statistics
Up until 2020, the police command has been subdivided into twelve
geographical zonal commands each headed by an assistant inspector general (AIG) for the ease of rapid deployment and operational
efficiency. Five new zones were added in 2020, bringing the total
number to seventeen zones:
• Zone 1: Kano, and Jigawa States, with headquarters in Kano
• Zone 2: Lagos and Ogun States, with headquarters in Lagos
• Zone 3: Adamawa, Gombe, and Taraba States with headquarters in Yola (Adamawa State)
• Zone 4: Benue, Nassarawa, and Plateau States, with headquarters in Makurdi (Benue State)
• Zone 5: Delta, and Edo States, with headquarters in Benin (Edo
State)
• Zone 6: Cross River, and Akwa Ibom States, with headquarters
in Calabar (Cross-River State)
• Zone 7: Federal Capital Territory, and Niger States, with headquarters in Abuja (Federal Capital Territory)
• Zone 8: Kogi, and Kwara States, with headquarters in Lokoja
(Kogi State)
• Zone 9: Abia, Ebonyi, and Imo States, with headquarters in
Umuahia (Abia State)
• Zone 10: Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara States, with headquarters
in Sokoto (Sokoto State)
• Zone 11: Osun, and Oyo States, with headquarters in Oshogbo
(Osun State)
• Zone 12: Bauchi, Borno, and Yobe States, with headquarters in
Bauchi (Bauchi State)
• Zone 13: Anambra and Enugu States, with headquarters in
Awka (Anambra State)
• Zone 14: Katsina and Kaduna with headquarters in Katsina.
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 63
• Zone 15: Borno and Yobe
• Zone 16: Bayelsa and Rivers States
• Zone 17: Ondo and Ekiti States with headquarters in Akure
Below each of these seventeen zones are State Commands, under
which are Area Commands and then Divisional Commands.
According to Odinkalu (2010), B and D Departments (Operations
and Criminal Investigations) are considered the most significant
in the NPF. B Department manages and coordinates the police
response to active threats with respect to law and order or public
safety and security (such as riots, demonstrations, and situations
of significant violence). Within B Department, the NPF has a rapid
deployment paramilitary unit known as the Police Mobile Force
(PMF) or MOPOL (Mobile Police). The tragedy of the deterioration in
the structure and ranks of the NPF is that the roughly thirty thousand strong PMF were originally established and trained to act as a
police strike force, but since then they have been reduced to orderly
duties for VIPs—“special escort [e.g., armored truck guards], static
guard, and road block duties” (Odinkalu, 2010). Meanwhile, armed
marauders have taken over Nigerian streets and villages, robbing,
kidnapping, and hacking innocent civilians to death without police
response.
The D Department is responsible for the Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID), and the State Criminal Investigation
Department (SCID) is its counterpart at the State Command level.
However, in the absence of an infrastructure for evidence-based
policing, the SCIDs, like the MOPOL, have acquired a reputation
for the habitual abuse of power. This includes unjustly detaining
and torturing suspects (sometimes to death) during an investigation.
The PMF, on the other hand, is mostly associated with (based on victim testimony) summary executions, usually by gunshot and often
without cause.
Within the SCIDs are the dreaded Special Anti-Robbery Squads
(SARS). These squads were created in response to a perceived
nationwide escalation of robberies at gunpoint. One squad is posi64 | History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria
tioned in each State Police Command, and together they are coordinated at the Force Headquarters by a commissioner of police.
The excessive abuses and senseless brutality of SARS reached a
crescendo in September of 2020, when Nigerian youth took to the
streets to demand their dissolution in the now historic #ENDSARS
nationwide protest.
****
Police Act 2020 In effect, despite the 377,000 strong police, which
includes specialized units and zonal commands, the police have
been ineffective in making a dent in crime in Nigeria. What a colonial inheritance.
History and Evolution of Modern Policing in Nigeria | 65
3. Developing Effective
Community-Policing
Programs
The term “police” is derived from the Greek words polis and politeuein, which refer to being a citizen who participates in the affairs
of the city or state (Scaramella et al., 2011). The implication is that
policing in a community grows naturally out of the participation of
its citizenry. When Robert Peel established the first known organized police—the London Metropolitan Police—it was based on the
principle of community policing. This principle is reflected on the
maxim of “the police are the public, and the public are the police.”
Community-oriented policing (COP), is an approximation of community policing through collaboration and the shared effort
between the police and the community that identifies and solves
community crime and disorder problems (US Department of Justice,
1994). In the United States, hundreds of thousands of rapes are
reported every year; but out of every one thousand reported rape
cases, only about five achieve a conviction (US Department of Justice, 1994), leading to the conclusion that the community will be
more effective in providing safety education to prevent rape
because it seems to be hopeless to rely on the police to arrest
rapists and convict them—prevention is better than conviction. In
this joint enterprise, all members of the community become active
allies in the communal effort to enhance the safety and quality of
lives in a given neighborhood. However, as policing developed, its
practice deviated from its original founding principle and became
detached from the public under a new maxim of “we versus them”
police culture powered by police autonomy, discretion, canteen culture, prejudice, and militarization.
| 67
Writing about “Social Control in Precolonial Igboland of Nigeria”
Onyeozili and Ebbe (2012) established that the Igbo of South East
Nigeria operated a very effective crime prevention and community
policing system based on a unique system of government that Njaka
(1974) described as “ohacracy.” In this Igbo communal system crime
was rare because religion and law are intertwined in Igbo social
systems to the point that their social, economic, and political life
is profoundly influenced by a “pantheon of supernatural powers,”
which operate within the human sphere in various ways as Anyasodo (1975) noted. Right from birth, the Igbo begin to teach their
children the dos and don’ts in Igboland; the taboos, abominations,
sacred and profane, sacrilege, and the importance of honor and dignity, respect for elders, women, and older siblings (Onyeozili and
Ebbe 2012).
Hence, throughout the Igbo communities, social control was
informal but efficient. There was no formalized police system in the
modern sense of the word. The Igbo never had a centralized government in the form of a king with a consolidated power, but they
were law-abiding people long before the advent and the spread of
European influences. They had well-established norms of conduct
and maintained numerous policing institutions for the express purpose of ensuring that laws were observed, and that order and harmony were maintained. Any infringement of laws was dealt with by
the community (oha), under the direction of the elders, and this was
the key to the success of the Igbo unique ohacracy system of government.
The judicial system of handling cases in precolonial Igboland was
informal. The “court of original jurisdiction” was the “court of the
father (husband) of a household.” Justice was primarily a family affair
(Ebbe, 2003). The second level of “court” was the council of elders
in the village. Each village was made up of people who were united
by ties of consanguinity. The cases that reach the village or community council were interfamily, civil, or criminal victimizations. Civil
matters were settled amicably, but criminal victimization had double-barreled penalty. The first “court of appeal” in precolonial Igbo
68 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
judicial system was the diviner. The council of elders could submit
suspects to the diviner who after some spiritual incantations, would
identify an offender on whom an appropriate punishment would be
meted by the elders (usually public shaming for minor crimes, or
ostracism for extreme crimes and abominations).
The highest “court of appeal” in Igbo judicial system, in precolonial times, was the “oracle” (Uchendu, 1965). The most famous
oracles in traditional Igboland were the Agbala of Awka, the Igweka-Ala of Umunoha, the Kamalu of Ozuzu, the Ibini ukpabe of AroChukwu (the “Long Juju”), the Mkpokiti abirikete of Umunze, and
the Haba of Agulu. The common characteristics of the oracles and
their operations were shrouded in a strict code of secrecy and the
oracle was believed to be a lesser god with supernatural powers
and was capable of connecting with the transcendental realm to
get answers to questions of its consultants (Onyeozili and Ebbe,
2012). It was the fear of the public shaming/penalty or, of the (policing/punitive) powers of the oracle that kept criminals in check and
crime at bay in precolonial Igboland. But colonialism and colonial
policing destroyed this time-tested community policing system and
replaced it with the existing colonial anarchy and brigand policing.
In Nigeria, formal policing was initially organized by the colonial
goons to intimidate and subjugate the “natives,” and thereby
enhance exploitation and servicing of the capitalist needs of colonialism (Onyeozili, 1998). For Alemika (1988), the colonial police force
was not established to serve the interest or improve the lots of
the colonized. Rather it was established to “enforce colonial repressive law and order, protect British interest,” and “ensure by ruthless
means if necessary, that the various taxes imposed on the poor and
oppressed colonized peoples were collected” (166).
Just as the concept of maintaining a police force originated in
England, efforts toward improvement and professionalization of the
police also began in England, in 1829, and then the United States,
and specifically, through education and training. Although no
research has been able to prove the necessity of a university degree
for entry into the police or determined how much knowledge colDeveloping Effective Community-Policing Programs | 69
lege graduates retain from their studies once they become engulfed
in field police work, scholars generally believe that higher education
is valuable in that it brings exposure to new ideas and improves positive decision making. Sociologists (Bressler, 1967; Saunders, 1970)
have argued that college education provides ethical and moral
indoctrination that legitimizes existing power arrangements and
reinforces appropriate attitudes for the sustenance of democratic
institutions and peaceful coexistence of diverse population groups.
To Bressler, general education is the most efficient form of occupational training that may better equip students to meet unpredictable
vocational demands (50).
Saunders (1970) further reinforces the importance of education
because police work is obviously susceptible to “unpredictable
vocational demands” (82). Currently, Nigeria employs three recruitment procedures for the constable, cadet inspector, and cadet
assistant superintendent cadres, respectively. For these positions
the minimum requirements are lower than West African School
Certificate; General Certificate of Education “Ordinary” Level
(WASC equivalent), in at least four subjects including English and
math; and a four-year university degree respectively (Nigeria Police,
1981).
Clearly the colonial government understood the importance of
education and training for effective policing, but it still took more
than five decades to achieve any level of professionalization in the
Nigerian police force. In the end, the final product Nigeria produced
is today a far cry from what is obtainable in several sister African
countries vis-a-vis other developed economies because the Nigerian police still regularly ranks near the bottom in the Corruption
Perception Index, which is published annually by Transparence
International (https://www.transparency.org/en/). The only difference is that while the colonial police used intimidation to service
the needs of the colonial government, the post-independence Nigeria police officers intimidate, sometimes maim, and extort from the
citizens to enrich their personal pockets.
70 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
Post-independence law in Nigeria is marked by entrenched colonial socialization. Following “freedom” from the colonial masters,
the political class in Nigeria perpetuated the inherited hegemonic
policing policy. While adapting to the Western culture (Onyeozili,
2005), the traditional values were compromised, and this had an
adverse implication for the institution of law enforcement. The
oppression and suppression of the opposition groups in the immediate post-independence era affected the effectiveness of Nigerian
law enforcement agencies.
Colonialism changed Nigerian traditional laws and its rules, institutions, procedures, and meanings (Mann and Roberts, 1991). The
police officers who were recruited to maintain law and order were
mere colonial stooges without traditional values in areas where federalism was adopted. The relationship between the central authority and the regions was nothing but cordial. The jackboot
socialization of early Hausa police (Ahire, 1991; Alemika, 1988; Crowder, 1978a; Ikime, 1977; Tamuno, 1970), unfortunately established the
criteria for future relationships between the police and the communities they (dis)serve.
It is no wonder then that the police force Nigeria inherited at
independence was a militarized force with little or no experience
in human management and who were detached from the community it was designed to serve. In general, the only qualification to
becoming an officer in colonial times was “a sound knowledge of
drill,” a clear and practical knowledge of criminal law, a sober judgment, and great personal energy rather than previous experience
in police duties (Tamuno, 1970). In practice, the police force, which
was designed to be civilianized and citizen friendly, has been sadly
colonial in nature, militaristic in outlook, and prepared to act as an
occupational force.
In an analysis of 6,500 respondents randomly selected from the
1970 US National Crime Survey data set, Liska et al. (1988) find that
fear of crime and constrained social behavior are part of a “positive
escalating loop.” This positive escalating loop is defined as a process
wherein fear constrains social behavior, which in turn increases
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 71
fear. The study also finds that the strength of this loop is contingent
on age, thus indicating that the elderly experience a stronger loop
effect than the young. They claim that constrained social behavior
increases rather than decreases fear, because the anticipated fear
of entering a dangerous situation results in the avoidance of such
situations, which in turn accentuates the fear (Onyeozili, 1994). In
Nigeria, the police presence itself constitutes a “dangerous situation”; hence fear, rather than security is pervasive and constrains
the behavior of much of the population.
The crime rate is increasing by the day in Nigeria. Daylight robberies and kidnappings for ransom have become the order of the
day. Boko Haram and other terrorist activities have struck fear into
the minds of ordinary citizens who are afraid to call the police
whom they distrust more than they fear the criminals. It is therefore
imperative that there is a great need to revolutionize the traditional
force through training to become a people-oriented police force,
and to be able the fight crime and restore order for four main compelling reasons.
First and historically, Nigeria is a colonial amalgam of diverse
ethnicities who originally do not share any cultural background or
values. In the North are the Kanuri, and predominantly Hausa people who were politically conquered and religiously Islamized by the
Fulani, but who linguistically subdued the Fulani. In the Middle Belt
region, are the Tivs, Birom, Idomas, and several other ethnic groups
who are mainly Christians, each with its own distinct culture. In
the South East which is mainly Christian are mainly the Igbo, Efik,
Ibibio, Ijaw, and few other ethnic groups. The Christian South West
is a majority Yoruba, Edo, Itsekiri, Urhobo, Esan, and several other
ethnic groups, some of whom share some cultural affinity. At the
time when professional training would have changed the force, military coups and subsequent military dictatorships killed whatever
remained of professionalism. These diverse ethnicities come with
diverse interests, and the fractured Nigeria police has never been
able to recover and become a cohesive caring entity responsive to
72 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
the needs of the populace, hence the need for a transition to community policing.
Second is the issue of urbanization. The post-independent Nigeria police was a traditional force designed to serve the monocultural
needs of an underdeveloped, and mainly local agricultural society
with limited needs, viz, maintenance of law and order. Today Nigeria
has grown and become urbanized and organic with several large
cities in the thirty-six states of the federation. With urbanization
comes sophistication and the multicultural needs of the populace
(including crime prevention), which the old, antiquated police system can no longer satisfy. There is constant conflict between Nigeria’s modern and urbanized youth and its police force, which is
not trained to understand and interact with them. What is needed,
therefore, is fundamental change, both in terms of overall strategy
and the organizational behavior of policing.
Third is the issue of technological advancement and a generational shift in values and perception. The twenty-first century is the
epitome of the Internet and Wi-Fi age where the new generation
can circumnavigate the world at the click of a mouse. Hunter et al.
(2000) insists that perception issues exist between street police and
the communities they are supposed to serve. Each views the other
differently, which in turn leads to fundamental misunderstanding.
In Nigeria it happens more often when police officers are posted to
serve in communities other than their own because, lacking sensitivity training, they are more likely to misread situations and then
exceed the boundaries of their authority in response.
Fourth, Nigerians do not trust their police because the force has
been involved in illegal activity on several fronts ranging from
extreme brutalization of citizens by Special Armed Robbery
Response Squads (SARS) to bribery, framing innocent people to
extort money, and outright killing innocent people for no apparent
justifiable reason. Police have also been known to participate, either
directly or indirectly, in supplying guns during armed robbery incidents. In short, many citizens have learned to be fearful of the
police out of necessity. Some even constrain their behavior by stayDeveloping Effective Community-Policing Programs | 73
ing home, not going out at night, or avoiding certain areas of the
city to avoid encountering the police. Community policing is the
best way to reestablish public trust and allay people’s fears. Following protests against police brutality with demands for #EndSARS,
the government announced, in 2020, that SARS would be abolished
and replaced with Special Weapons and Tactical unit (SWAT). What
the government didn’t announce, however, was the establishment of
community policing or the end of militarized policing, corruption,
intimidation, and neocolonial governance.
In October 2020 Jibrin Ibrahim wrote a column in the Daily Trust
newspaper entitled “It’s NOT about Dismantling SARS: It’s about
Democratising Nigeria.” In it he provides, essentially, a brief history
of a failing state:
In 2005, the Justice Ejiwunmi Presidential Commission on
Reform of the Administration of Justice made substantial
recommendations on Police Reform that were not implemented. President Obasanjo then established the Muhammadu Danmadami Presidential Commission on Police
Reform in 2006 and the police refused to implement the
report. When President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua came into
power, he found out that the Dammadami report was not
implemented so he established the M. D. Yusuf Presidential
Committee on Police Reform to update the recommendations but once again, the police resisted reform. Yusuf in
his report had pointed out that the Force has a workforce
that is largely “undesirable” and complained that many of the
police personnel were “criminals.” In 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan set up the Parry Osayande Presidential Commission on Police Reform Report and once again the police
refused to implement the recommendations. The police
therefore have the institutional memory that no Nigerian
President has succeeded in making them implement reform,
they simply say YES SIR and continue with what they have
been doing. The youth know that which is why they con-
74 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
tinued with their demonstrations even after the police have
once again promised they will reform themselves. We will
have police reform when a Nigerian President imposes it on
the institution.
Ibrahim could have mentioned the Justice Oputa Commission on
Human Rights Violations in Nigeria just to illustrate the point that
the problem goes beyond policing, as the title of the article rightly
framed it. That being the case, Ibrahim drops the ball with his final
sentence: “We will have police reform when a Nigerian President
imposes it on the institution.” In a democracy the president alone is
not expected to impose anything without checks and balances. It is
the people on the streets demanding change who shall govern the
people, by the people, and for the people to bring an end to police
brutality, to the miitarization of civil society, and to neocolonial governance.
Community Policing
Community-oriented policing is defined by the US Department of
Justice (2014) as “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of partnerships and problemsolving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions
that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder,
and fear of crime” under the control of the police. Community policing differs from community-oriented policing in that the former is
not under the control of a corrupt police force. Community policing is the way that people have protected themselves as members of
the “polis” for thousands of years, even before there was an institution called the police. The aim is to proactively prevent crime before
it happens, thereby eliminating any atmosphere of fear from the
community. Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux (1990) refer to community
policing as a new contract between the police and the community
they serve based on mutual trust and respect that allows for individuals to accept responsibility as stakeholders in their own community safety affairs, thereby freeing the police to develop long-term
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 75
solutions to community concerns and factors that contribute to
crime.
In the United States, a number of cities have implemented community-oriented policing through diverse programs and practices,
but the concept and principles supporting it are similar when it
comes to planning and execution. That is, they all racially profile
African American and Latino/a communities as the most likely to
be criminal and thereby watch them more closely with some members of the communities maliciously reporting hoaxes against innocent people of color and resulting in increased police brutality as
opposed by the Black Lives Matter movement. All in all, community
policing goes beyond a cooperative working relationship between
prejudiced police field officers in institutionally racist-sexist-imperialist societies and the oppressed communities they supposedly
protect. According to David Bayley, “[C]ommunity policing means
different things to different people—public relations campaigns,
shopfronts and mini-stations, rescaled patrol beats, liaison with
ethnic groups, permission for rank-and-file to speak to the press,
Neighborhood Watch, foot patrols, patrol-detective teams, and
door-to-door visits by police officers” (1988: 225).
In general, the whole concept behind community policing derives
from bottom-up implementation and not just a feel good propaganda campaign by the police for more funding, more powers, and
more impunity. Community policing reminds us that the community
has always relied on its own members for protection in most cases
while the police may be called in on rare cases to help resolve conflicts that get out of hand. The Nigerian Police Force is so corrupt
that, in general, the only people who dare rely on its officers for protection are the rich who personally hire them as escorts and bodyguards. But in a society with deep social injustice, even the rich will
not feel safe with battalions of mobile police officers guarding them.
76 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
Elements of Community Policing
The major elements of community policing include community
partnerships, other governmental agencies, community members/
groups, nonprofit/service provider groups, private businesses, and
the media. Each (and other aspects) of these elements are the glue
that holds the policing philosophy in place. Community partnership
involves police development of positive relationships with the community by creating a forum where the community participates in
discussions and the decision-making process in matters affecting
the community. It does not imply that the police no longer exercise
authority over law enforcement; rather, it employs the community
trust, knowledge, and expertise in identifying crime-prone issues
in advance and addressing them before they manifest (US Department of Justice, 2014). It also implies some level of civilianization
giving room for the public to play a greater role in prioritizing
and addressing public safety problems, leaving the sworn officers
more room to attend to other law enforcement-related community
issues.
In community policing, building community partnerships involves
the inclusion of other governmental agencies and community
groups whose staff live and work in the community, and so have a
stake in its development. Some of these agencies include local government officials, prosecutors, probation and parole offices, social
service and public works departments, neighboring law enforcement agencies, health and human services, child support services,
ordinance enforcement, and schools (US Department of Justice,
1994; 2014). Some nongovernmental groups include churches, formal and informal community leaders, residents, visitors, and
tourists. Others include victims’ groups, service clubs, support
groups, issue groups, advocacy groups, community development
corporations, and the faith community. In Nigeria where some of
these agencies are nonexistent, there are other equivalent agencies
or groups that will suffice.
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 77
Additionally, community policing will co-opt other groups like
private businesses and the media. The business groups will serve
to identify business-related sources of crime and help the police
address the situation. The media will generally serve as a medium
through which information is disseminated to the wider public.
Such information includes publicizing community concerns and
available solutions, new policies jointly developed under the policecommunity partnership, new laws, public perceptions of the police,
crime problems, and fear of crime (US Department of Justice, 1994;
2014).
Other important key elements of community policing are organizational management and the administrative structure of local
police departments. Generally, the management structure of every
police department is a centralized authority whereby power
devolves from the police captain or the divisional police officer
(DPO) in Nigerian context. Since the goal of community policing is
to reduce crime and disorder by careful examination of neighborhood problems, the implication is that the police must be immersed
in the affairs of the community so that they can understand the
people they serve in order to detect and solve their problems. For
an effective immersion, the first step is the assignment of officers to
a permanent beat to ensure that they get to know and understand
their environment.
While it is true that several commissions have examined policing
issues in the US (e.g., the 1967 US President’s Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice, the 1968 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, and the 1973 National Advisory
Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals), their findings
are not only applicable to the United States. There is much that can
be applied to policing in Nigeria as well (Carter, 2002; Scaramella
et al., 2011) such as improving the quality of police personnel and
the quality of officer preparation and training. Other recommendations include reforming the management structure of law enforcement agencies, improving police-community relations and service
delivery, and redefining police responsibilities. All of these recom78 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
mended changes could be—and need to be—implemented in Nigeria. In truth, they remain to be implemented fully in the United
States, so Nigeria could actually leapfrog ahead of the US by
addressing its policing practices through community-oriented
policing.
The practical methods for effective enforcement of communityoriented policing include the establishment of different facets of
efforts like command decentralization and a community police
advisory board (CPAB) (Gascón and Roussell, 2019; US Department
of Justice, 2014; Carter, 2002); neighborhood police substations,
a resident officer program, and neighborhood-oriented policing
(NOP) (Hunter et al., 2000; Wrobleski and Hess, 2006). Other efforts
include problem-oriented policing (POP) (Hunter et al., 2000;
Rosenbaum et al., 1998; Scaramella et al., 2011; Wrobleski and Hess,
2006); education/training and enlightenment (Carter, 2002; Wrobleski and Hess, 2006); and addressing broken windows (Kamalu and
Onyeozili, 2018; Kelling and Coles, 1996; Wilson and Kelling, 1982).
The “broken windows” thesis posits that if minor anti-social
behaviors are ignored in poor inner-city locations, they tend to lead
to major crime hot spots and so, zero tolerance should be the guide
to law enforcement officers. This thesis fails to explain why the
suburbs with no broken windows tend to be the locations of most
school shootings compared to poor inner-city schools. Nor does it
address the issues raised by William Chambliss (1973) in “The Saints
and the Roughnecks,” by Steve Box (1983) in Power, Crime and Mystifications, by Jeffrey Reiman in The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get
Prison, by Paul Gilroy in “The Myth of Black Criminality,” by Stuart
Hall, et al., on Policing the Crisis, by Frank Pearce (1978) in Crimes of
the Powerful, and by Biko Agozino in Counter-Colonial Criminology
to show that most of the poor remain overwhelmingly law abiding
while many of the rich get away with crimes.
The first step in creating community policing is community identification. Flynn (1998) refers to the traditional community as a paradigm that varies from one individual to the next based on each
individual’s background, socialization, education, and general perDeveloping Effective Community-Policing Programs | 79
ceptions of society. Based on this definition, some think of a community as a residential neighborhood, or a city, county, or region.
Other individuals may interpret a community to mean people who
live in each geographic, housing development, or political area. Yet
some others may think of community based on ethnic, racial, or cultural groups (Igbo, Efik, Ijaw, Yoruba, and so forth), or as a people
with shared common interests like business academic, and such.
Similarly, it could be a nontraditional community of a collection or
set of groups who share the characteristics of a community, such
as businesses, residents, and tourists who may inhabit an area temporarily or permanently, but who share a common interest in crime
reduction and maintaining order. In the case of Nigeria where these
markers are not well delineated, and that has a national police system, we shall use the geographic area covered by a state authority
as a community for implementation.
The next step in command decentralization (Gascón and Roussell,
2019; US Department of Justice, 2014; Carter, 2002), is creating mini
police stations in communities headed by frontline field sergeants.
Sequel to this phase is delegating decision-making authority to the
frontline sergeant (who does not have to refer to a command captain in decisions concerning their beat), and officers who will feel
accountable and take responsibility for their decisions and role in
community policing. Decentralized decision making involves the
devolution of the authority hierarchy of the agency and allowing
officers to use their discretion in handling calls, in decision making,
in coordinating various resources to address a problem, and the
autonomy to establish relationships within the community.
In addition to decentralization and local mini police station is
the resident officer program, and neighborhood- oriented policing
(NOP) (Hunter et al., 2000; Wrobleski and Hess, 2006). This feature
comes with a permanent beat assignment for all officers who are
required to live in the community they serve. By owning their beat
and residing in the community, the police officers will get to know
the residents, interact face-to-face with the residents, and build the
community trust. Where feasible, these community officers should
80 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
mainly patrol the community on foot or bicycles as part of NOP,
attend joint police-community planning meetings, and develop and
coach local sports activities with teens and children in the neighborhood, all of which will make information gathering easier and for
the officer to know when there is a potential problem in the community.
Decentralization is often complemented with a community police
advisory board (CPAB), which is a civilian board set up to investigate
police excesses and recommend punishment. Although not a
favorite of the police, Wrobleski and Hess (2006) posit that a CPAB
maintains successful oversight of policing agencies by investigating
complaints with the authority to refer cases for prosecution. They
take a proactive role of investigating the underlying causes of police
misconduct, analyze them, and recommend disciplinary actions
against erring officers, thereby discouraging future occurrence and
copycats. Reparative justice in the form of substantial payouts for
the victims of police brutality is also recommended.
Problem-oriented policing (POP) (Hunter et al., 2000; Rosenbaum
et al., 1998; Scaramella et al., 2011; Wrobleski and Hess, 2006) is a
proactive department-wide policing strategy of targeting a particular persistent societal problem and then uprooting it in a timely
manner before it escalates. A good example is the removal of prostitutes and drug dealers from the streets. In Nigeria, it will be a
daunting task because we have many target groups (prostitutes,
Internet fraudsters—aka yahoo-yahoo boys—drug dealers, and so
forth) that it may overwhelm the police. This is usually achieved
through directed patrol as the primary solution strategy and a close
collaboration with the community to obtain required information.
The only setback in this policy is that single-item enforcement
might result in crime displacement instead of elimination. Since this
type of enforcement is dependent upon community collaboration
for information, it may run into problems in Nigeria where people might be reluctant to give the names of criminals due to family affinity or fear of retaliation. Community and police trust and
accountability will make a difference here.
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 81
The broken window theory of policing was popularized by the
work of Wilson and Kelling (1982), which argued that when community disorder goes unchecked and reaches a critical mass, it
creates more serious crime problems and urban decay. Using the
broken window analogy, Kamalu and Onyeozili (2018) concur that
broken windows in a community depict signs of instability, decay,
high crime rates, and lack of order and social control. Simply put,
if minor offenses are allowed to fester and offenders go unchecked,
they may up the ante and indulge in more serious crimes. For example, leaving the front lawn of a home unkempt suggests to a potential burglar that the homeowners are not home, so also with daily
newspapers piling up at the front porch/door. Hence, the need to
address these issues as quickily and as efficiently as possible using
proactive policing tactics. But there are no unkept lawns or pile-up
of daily nespapers at Nigerian homes and so the broken windows
thesis is less relevant in Nigeria than garbage heaps on urban street
corners, but they are connected with sanitation and not with crime
hotspots.
According to Kelling and Coles (1996), the success of broken window approach is built on four pillars:
1. Putting police in close contact with those who are predisposed
to commit crime.
2. Projecting high police presence and visibility, which has a
strong deterrence on potential criminal elements and perpetrators of crime.
3. Enhancing the ability of citizens to take control of their neighborhoods thereby preventing crime.
4. Promoting the cooperation of the police and community in
fighting crime through an integrated approach.
Finally, police education, continuous in-service training, and public
enlightenment (Carter, 2002; Wrobleski and Hess, 2006) seems to be
the most important aspect of community policing and COP. Carter
et al., (1989) found that college-educated police recruits are slightly
82 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
more likely to employ alternative approachs rather than making
arrests. By this assertion, they are stating that higher education
plays a role in improving police decision-making processes. For
Nigeria, where almost all noncommissioned police officers do not
have a four-year college degree, the authors argue that it is imperative to suggest that thorough training and continuing in-service
training must be mandatory for community policing and for COP to
work.
Additionally, the authors posit that public enlightenment program
must be part of any community policing and COP. That is, using the
media to disseminate pertinent information and educate the general public concerning the new policing approach. Where possible,
a joint sensitization education class may be designed for the patrol
officers and community leaders in order to build trust and allay
fears. To this end, the police must use the media as an effective tool
to sell the new policing method.
In summary, an effective community policing that Nigeria needs
should take care of the obstacles identified in Onyeozili (2005),
namely, changing public perception of the nation’s police image as a
bribery and corruption-ridden agency by declaring total war against
police graft as a starting point in the professionalization of the
force. In practice it involves creating a new police czar who would
make corruption reduction a major goal. Toward this end, the police
should stop criminal prosecutions and defer them to another government agency like the director of public prosecutions (DPP). Fear
of prosecution by an independent agency will also reinforce discipline and make it easier to control police corruption and excesses.
Furthermore, an immediate revision of the Nigerian police pay
scale is needed as a first step toward discipline. In all developed
societies, the salary of a police officer is above that of ordinary
citizens with an equivalent education. A decent pay matched with
a fixed pay day is a worthwhile investment that will encourage
restraint from acceptancing bribes to augment their meager
income. The police should be shielded from political appointments
because such appointments corrupt the officers, destroy espirit de
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 83
corps, skew their sense of neutrality and impartiality, and infuse a
sense of allegiance to appointing authority. It is a major obstacle to
police effectiveness and must be discouraged at all cost if improved
police performance and CP must be achieved.
The role of police in any civilized society is to serve and protect
the citizens, so efforts should be made to fully professionalize the
police through further training and re-education such as targeted
special college equivalent classes in social sciences and criminal law
procedures. This would improve the police officer’s human relations capacity. With professionalism goes meritorious recruitment
and depoliticization. Police officers should be recruited based on an
established minimum criteria and educational standard. People who
do not qualify should not have a place in community policing and in
COP. Meritorious recruitment will enhance meritorious promotion
since officers will aspire to get to the top, and not await promotion
as a birthright. Local criteria should be set by local agencies as they
deem fit to serve the needs of individual local communities.
We therefore argue for the decentralization of the Nigerian Police
Force, fully aware that the misuse of local police forces by regional
governments contributed immensely to the collapse of the First
Republic. It is a fact of recent memory that while the Dogarai were
used to intimidate non-Muslims in the Northern region, the Western regional government under the political Action Group used the
regional police (Olopa) to maim and burn the opposition in the
operation wetie (dousing opposition candidates or supporters with
gasoline and setting them ablaze). While decentralization might not
be a panacea to a perfect police force, it will however improve their
effectiveness in the communities they serve. The British colonialist’s
recognition of the need for local police prompted the replacement
of earlier Hausa police in Lagos with indigenous Yoruba recruits
in 1895. We recommend a three-tier police structure without any
prosecutorial power: the federal police, the state police, and the
local government police. While the federal and state police departments deal with federal and state law enforcement matters, the
local government police (supervised by a civilian board) will be orga84 | Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs
nized in keeping with a community policing model in which officers
are embedded in the communities they serve, deployed solely to
deal with matters of law and order that are best handled at the local
level. Not only will this bring people closer to their police, it will
prevent the hijacking of the police command by corrupt and tainted
absentee politicians in Abuja. The common practice of using police
intimidation in poll rigging and “electing” the president’s yes men
as distinguished senators, honorable members of legislative houses,
and excellencies of the governors’ mansions, will become a thing of
the past, and the opposition will have a voice as in other democracies.
In conclusion, we have argued in this chapter for the establishment of COP and of community policing in Nigeria. We have also laid
out the steps that need to be taken for this to happen, and, based on
all available evidence, the benefits are immense. On the police side,
it creates a sense of family and service partnership between the
police and the communities they serve. It has also been shown that
COP is a problem-solving approach because it engages the public and the police in a joint effort that enhances the ability of the
police to obtain the necessary information to solve crime and maintain order. Onyeozili (2005) has enumerated the conditions that
are conducive to effective COP, and they include the professionalization of the Nigerian Police Force so that it can effectively discharge its civic duties to society. Thorough professionalism would
be achieved through further training and re-education (such as targeted special college equivalent classes in social sciences and criminal law) designed to improve the overall human relations capacity
of the police.
Police personnel should refocus their attention on the fundamental task of being responsible to the communities they serve, as this
one change would go a long way toward fostering peaceful relationships between the police and the people. Local agencies should be
responsible for setting the criteria they deem fit to serve the needs
of their communities. Toward this goal, we have argued for decentralization of the Nigerian Police Force, fully aware that it is not a
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 85
panacea to crime-free society and that the misuse of local police
force by regional governments contributed immensely to the collapse of Nigeria’s First Republic.
Moreover, and as suggested by the US Department of Justice
(2014), in planning for a COP program, the internal affairs department should have a written statement reflecting a nationwide commitment to community policing and a plan that matches operational
needs to available resources and expertise. The Internal Affairs
Department and police officers should also be well versed in all
components of COP. As an example, there must be a concise police
mission and values statement to be communicated to the benefiting
community. There should also be clear and institutionalized problem solving and partnership plans in COP policies and procedures
to ensure that community policing principles and practices impact
the target community. However, our proposal is to move beyond
the community-oriented policing (COP) found in parts of the United
States because their approach has not eliminated police misconduct
and racist-sexist-classist abuse that prompted the Black Lives Matter movement. We prefer to see community policing in addition to
community-oriented policing in Africa.
In order to prevent impunity for police misconduct so as to
restore confidence in the police, the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime handbook (UNODC, 2011), suggests the establishment of
an independent oversight body (like the Internal Affairs Department) free from police management, executive, and political influence with subpoena powers responsible for timely investigation of
all complaints and making recommendations. This unit will also
maintain supervisory oversight in situations involving death in
police custody, with the police carrying the burden of explaining
how the death occurred. The same body must ensure that failure
of police management to implement recommended preventive measures to forestall future misconduct will lead to disciplinary sanctions, including dismissal of responsible supervisors from service
and defunding by redirecting funds to community agencies that are
responsive to community needs.
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In line with international law, effective police accountability,
integrity, and compliance with law is a requirement for all police
officers including the Nigerian police. To ensure compliance, the
Nigerian Police Force has to reward behavior that promotes the
development of a culture of integrity including encouragement of
whistleblowing, with a zero tolerance for internal corruption,
bribery, biased recruitment practice, skewed promotion, and other
unethical conducts of any kind. Additionally, all police officials
should receive continued law enforcement professional education
and training with a special emphasis on ethics and integrity, take a
mandatory ethical oath, and must pass a standardized test on ethics
and integrity as a criterion for promotion. The government must be
ready to pay reparative justice to all victims of police brutality.
Developing Effective Community-Policing Programs | 87
4. Models/Best Practices of
Community Policing
Community policing is a challenging concept, one that did not magically appear to solve society’s ills. It is a new concept that started
taking its place in policing across the globe to solve the problem of
crime and to involve communities in the criminal justice process.
Community policing is a new concept in policing that involves the
interaction between the police and the citizens in the community
in a positive way and with a common effort to prevent and control
crime (Amadi, 2014). According to the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Service: “Community Policing is a philosophy that promotes organization strategies that support the systematic use of
partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively
address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety
issues, such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime” (Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014: 1). Trojanowicz and
Bucqueroux (1990) stated that “community policing is a philosophy
and not a specific tactic: a proactive decentralized approach,
designed to reduce crime, disorder, and fear of crime, by involving
the same officers in the same community for a long-term basis”.
Skogan (2004) enumerated four general principles to define community policing: community engagement, problem solving, organizational transformation, and crime prevention by citizens and police
working together. This is what community policing simply means,
citizens and police working together with a common goal of solving
crime and maintaining public order. As Peak and Barthe (2009) put
it: “Community policing goes beyond simply putting officers on foot
or bicycle patrols or in neighborhood stations. It redefines the role
of the officer on the street, from crime fighter to problem solver
and neighborhood ombudsman. It forces a cultural transformation
of the entire department including a decentralized organizational
| 89
structure and changes in recruiting, training, awards systems, evaluation, promotions, and so forth. Further, this philosophy asks officers to break away from the binds of incident-driven policing and to
seek proactive and creative resolution to crime and disorder.”
It is very important to cite the nine guiding principles of policing
by consent originally set forth by Robert Peel, the founder of modern policing (Miller et al, 2018). These principles require public consent to policing and so it was not intended to be by force unless
the police need to use physical force to stop a crime that is taking
place (principle 6). These principles will guide us in our discussion
of community policing.
1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime
and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent
upon public approval of police existence, actions, behavior, and
the ability of the police to secure and maintain public respect.
3. The police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in
voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain public respect.
4. The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured
diminishes, proportionately, to necessity for the use of physical
force.
5. The police seek and preserve public favor, not by catering to
public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely
impartial service to the law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws; by ready offering of individual service
and friendship to all members of society without regard to
their race or social standing.
6. The police should use physical force to the extent necessary to
secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the
exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning are found to be
insufficient.
7. The police at all times should maintain a relationship with the
90 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police
are the public and the public are the police; the police are the
only members of the public who are paid to give full-time
attention to duties that are incumbent on every citizen in the
interest of the community welfare.
8. The police should always direct their actions toward their
functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary by avenging individuals or the state.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with
them (Miller et al, 2018).
Policing Models
Traditional or Reactive Policing
In general, traditional policing emphasizes routine patrol and
responding to crime after it occurs with rapid response to calls for
service accompanied by follow-up investigations and arrests. This is
accomplished largely through hierarchal structures that have been
designed to limit citizen interaction with police, in part because of
the fear of encouraging police corruption (Kelling and Moore, 1988)
In this type of model officers barely know anyone in the areas where
they are responding. There is nothing in place in this type of policing to prevent crime from happening. This type of policing functions
like the Fire Department.
Predictive Policing
This is the use of predictive and analytical techniques in law
enforcement to identify potential offenders. Not much is heard
about this system precisely because it is a secretive tool that solves
the least number of crimes and remains unpopular because it relies
on racial profiling to target people of color even when they are not
necessarily more crime prone. Increasingly, computer algorithms
are used to collate enormous amounts of digital information about
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 91
social media postings and phone calls while closed-circuit televisions are mounted on public places and business premises to capture surveillance videos that could be used to identify suspects after
the fact. Civil liberties advocates oppose these on the ground that
they invade the privacy of law-abiding people.
Problem–Oriented Policing (POP)
The works of Herman Goldstein in the early 1970s and the experiments in the early 1980s in Madison, Wisconsin; Baltimore County,
Maryland; and Newport News, Virginia serve as the basis for the
problem-oriented policing movement. The emphasis in this type of
policing is on preventing crime before it happens. Detectives watch
for patterns of crimes to help to understand when and how crimes
are being committed. Once the pattern is known they will search for
ways to stop crimes from happening in that area. This is a proactive style of policing but it may simply displace crime to other places
rather than prevent crime completely.
Community–Oriented Policing (COP)
This system focuses on the police building relationships with the
community. The officers will be known by the community and the
community will know the officers in their beat. The officers rely on
the community to report suspicious behavior or tips on criminals
in their area. The system creates a kind of relationship between the
officers and the community and creates some elements of trust. We
will be discussing more on this model.
Reassurance Policing
This is similar to community policing in that it involves the community in solving community-related problems. It also aims to identify
signal crimes that shape a community’s perception of risk from a
particular type of crime during a given period.
92 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment (SARA)
This refers to the four key steps in problem solving and to the decision-making process. (It will be discussed later in the chapter.)
Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP)
Intelligence-led policing is a management and resources allocation
approach to law enforcement using data collection and intelligence
analysis to set specific priorities for all manner of crime, including
those associated with terrorism. ILP is a collaborative approach
based on improved intelligence operations and community-oriented policing and problem solving, which the field of law enforcement has considered beneficial for many years (Office of Homeland
Security, 2002).
CompStat
Originating in New York City in 1994 under the leadership of then
Commissioner of Police William Bratton, CompStat is a progressive,
goal-oriented, information-driven police management strategy
based on four core components: (1) accurate and timely collection
of crime data and intelligence analysis, (2) rapid deployment of personnel and other resources, (3) effective tactics and strategies to
address crime and disorder, and (4) relentless follow up, assessment,
and accountability (Jang, Hoover, Joo, 2010). It encourages police
agencies to focus on crime reduction goals through specific policies
and procedures supported by timely information and improved
technology. CompStat is compatible with community policing and
can be used to build problem solving and accountability for innovative partnership.
Essential Elements of Community Policing
Three essential elements of community policing are partnership,
problem solving, and organizational change (Morabito, 2010).
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 93
Partnership
Community policing is based on the notion that citizens should be
empowered to prevent crime or the problems that lead to crime
(Stevens, 2001). This partnership can equally help police in identifying possible crime and criminal activities around the community.
Partnership is an indispensable relationship between the police and
the public. Partnerships are central to modern-day policing because
they recognize a basic truth—law enforcement cannot do it alone
(Peed, 2008). This partnership should be developed in order to build
trust in the police to find solutions to problems. Police can rarely
solve public safety problems alone, hence police community relationships should encourage interactive partnerships with relevant
stakeholders. The partnership between the police and public can be
used to accomplish the two interrelated goals of developing solutions to problems through collaborative solving and improving public trust.
The partnership can also be extended to several groups in the
community; those who live and work in the community, community
leaders, and private business owners who bring considerable
resources to the community. The media should also be included
because it can bring considerable information to the community.
The media will assist in publicizing community concerns and available solutions to them.
Problem Solving
Spelman and Eck (1987) state that problem–oriented policing converges on three main themes: increase effectiveness, reliance on the
expertise and creativity of officers, and closer involvement with the
community. These themes are implemented by attacking underlying conditions that deplete patrol officers’ and detectives’ time and
educating officers to study problems and develop innovative solutions to ensure that police address the needs of citizens.
This is a very broad term that can be described as the process
by which specific issues or concerns are identified and the most
94 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
appropriate remedies to abate the problem(s) are identified. Community policing encourages agencies to proactively develop solutions to the immediate underlying conditions contributing to public
safety problems. SARA is a major conceptual way for helping officers
think about problem solving in a structured and disciplined way.
SARA is:
Scanning: identifying and prioritizing the problem
Analysis: researching what is known about the problem;
Response: developing solutions to bring about lasting
reductions in the number and extent of problem; and
Assessment: evaluating the success of the responses. Using
the crime triangle (victim/offender/location) to focus on
immediate conditions.
Organizational Change
Organizational change in community policing involves the decentralization of police power where beat officers have the power to
solve problems and make operational decisions that are very suitable to their assignments. Individual officers are given the freedom
to resolve concerns within the community without consulting the
head office because they are very familiar with the community.
Organization transformation involves the integration of the community policing philosophy into the mission statement, policies and
procedures, performance evaluations, hirings, promotional practices, training programs, and other systems and activities that
define the organizational culture and activities of a police department (US Department of Justice, 2014).
Models of Community Policing
United States of America
The history of policing in the United States falls into three significant eras. The political era from 1840 to 1930. During this era the
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 95
police was decentralized (but racist), provided social services to the
(white) community, and were anxious to have an intimate relationship with the (middle class white) community. The second period
was the reform era from the 1930s to the 1980s, during which time
the police was centralized and their focus was on crime control
(racist repression of the Civil Rights Movement and counter intelligence programs against the anti-war movement) and they lost their
relationship with the public they served. The third era is the community era in which we are interested. Here the police became more
decentralized, and their focus was on improving the quality of life in
communities and building relationships with the people they serve
(but Black Lives Matter protests have brought to light continuing
problems of institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism in policing).
Community policing is associated with the February 1968 Kerner
Commission Report from the President’s National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorder. At the center of the report was the level
of racism in the country and calls for aid to African American communities to avoid the rising racial polarization and violence. Hence
law enforcement started changing their attitudes and became more
responsive to the desire of the public for a different kind of policing.
This period started with so many names such as community policing, community-oriented policing (COP), and neighborhood policing. But, the most important thing at this period is that police
officers became a part of the community and not apart from the
community as was envisaged by Robert Peel: “The police are the
public and the public are the police.”
The 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, ushered in the
hiring of one hundred thousand new police officers and allocated
$11 billion dollars to American law enforcement. The important thing
about this act was its provision “to foster problem solving and interaction with communities by police officers, that is, to encourage
and accelerate transitions to community policing by police agencies
throughout the country” (Skogan, 2004: 3). The act actually was the
basis for the creation of the Office of Community Oriented Polic96 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
ing Services (COPS). It also authorized COPS to spend $9 billion on
grants to state, local, and other law enforcement agencies on supporting functions, which included training and technical assistance
in community policing through the Community Policing Consortium. The act also sought to advance community policing throughout the United States.
In the executive summary of the “Final Report of the President’s
Task Force on 21st Century Policing,” May 2015, under President
Barack Obama, there are six pillars, of which community policing is
the fourth. Here are the recommendations:
1. Law enforcement agencies should develop and adopt policies
and strategies that reinforce the importance of community
engagement in managing public safety.
2. Community policing should be infused throughout the culture
and organizational structure of law enforcement agencies.
3. Law enforcement agencies should engage in multidisciplinary,
community team approaches for planning, implementing, and
responding to crisis situations with complex casual factors.
4. Communities should support a culture and practice of policing
that reflects the values of protection and promotion of the dignity of all, especially the most vulnerable.
5. Community policing emphasizes working with neighborhood
residents to co-produce public safety. Law enforcement agencies should work with community residents to identify problems and collaborate on implementing solutions that produce
meaningful results for the community.
6. Communities should adopt policies and programs that address
the needs of children and youth most at risk for crime or violence and reduce aggressive law enforcement tactics that stigmatize youth and marginalize their participation in school and
communities.
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The report summarized that:
[L]aw enforcement’s obligation is not only to reduce crime
but also to do so fairly while protecting the rights of citizens.
Any prevention strategy that unintentionally violates civil
rights, compromises police legitimacy, or undermines trust
is counterproductive from… both ethical and cost-benefit
perspective(s). Ignoring these considerations can have both
financial costs (e.g., lawsuits) and social costs (e.g., loss of
public support). It must be stressed that the absence of
crime is not the final goal of law enforcement. Rather, it
is the promotion of and protection of public safety while
respecting the dignity and rights of all. And public safety
and well-being cannot be attained without the community’s
belief that well-being is at the heart of all enforcement activities. It is critical to help community members see the police
as allies rather than as an occupying force and to work in
concert with other community stakeholders to create more
economically and socially stable neighborhood.” (President’s
Task Force on 21st Century Policing)
Community policing in the United States has undoubtedly achieved
certain goals such as reducing crime and increasing the feeling of
safety among (some) community members. Of course, numerous
problems persist, such as racial profiling (as used in Stop and Frisk),
the war on drugs, and the use of deadly force, which have led many
to fear the police even more. Still, it seems clear that when police
officers work in partnership with their communities, crime rates
decline. The community policing, problem-solving philosophy has
helped officers identify problems in their communities and (in partnership with those communities) find ways to address them.
In Gary, Indiana, the police have made community-oriented policing training mandatory. The Police Department established a regular community forum led by police officers, and all public safety
officers participate in programs like the neighborhood cleanup,
sporting, and community services programs, and some and have
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even supported the Black Lives Matter movement. Police also
engage the community and neighborhood leaders to address crime
directly, the factors that cause crime, and the ways to prevent it.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti created a new LAPD Division
entirely dedicated to community outreach. It is also involved in cutting-edge technologies with outfitting its officers with body cameras and other programs dedicated to deepening its relationship
with the diverse LA communities. Some of these programs address
gang reduction and youth development and the Domestic Abuse
Response Team program.
In Houston, Texas, the initial police community program started
as the Fear Reduction Project to “create a sense of community in the
area, and to identify a group of residents who would work regularly
with the police to define and solve neighborhood problems” (Pate
et al., 1986). The police organized a door-to-door survey to find
people willing to work with the police or host meetings to identify
problems in the community. From these meetings came a neighborhood cleaning campaign, safehouses, and a drug information seminar. The project was ultimately successful: door-to-door contact
helped the police in solving common local problems, the frequency
of social disorder declined, and residents reported a more positive
evaluation of the police.
What remains to be seen is the long-term impact of the Black
Lives Matter movement, which of course has called for a number
of important reforms including the defunding of militarized policing
and more funding for community safety initiatives.
Brazil
With the relative success of community policing in parts of the
United States where the poor, women, and people of color are kept
under the dominance of imperialist, patriarchal, white supremacy,
the settler-colonial state of Brazil began its quest for community
policing in the 1980s. With the increasing evidence of racism-sexism-classism in relations between the public and the police in Brazil,
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 99
the federal government in 1996 recommended that all of the Brazilian states should implement community policing programs. Following the guidelines, the federal government established the
Consulting Commission for the Implementation of Community
Policing. There are fourteen Brazilian states with community-policing programs.
At the beginning it was difficult to get the chauvinist police force
in Rio de Janeiro to accept the concept of community policing
because they considered it to be soft, easy “women’s work.” Such
a prejudiced view serves to further expose the racism, sexism, and
exploitation
that
informed
conventional
policing
in
Brazil
(Musumeci et al., 1996: 30).
Copacabana and Leme were pilot areas to introduce community
policing because they comprise many different sections of urban
life. They house high-income residential neighborhoods, luxury
hotels, popular beaches, and a vibrant night life. However, they also
house some poor neighborhoods, or favelas, and report a booming
drug trade. The police there faced numerous operational difficulties
including poor salaries, a lack of roads leading to the poorer neighborhoods, and constant power cuts that made everything very difficult for the police.
Community policing became difficult in Copacabana and Leme
because of the distrust people have toward the police. Many citizens
blame the police for most of the civilian deaths and suspect that
they support the drug trade. The police claimed that they were
underequipped, that they were poorly trained, and that the institution they worked for was highly corrupt. The solution was to implement community policing to change the image of the police and to
gain the confidence of the people they serve.
The Copacabana area was divided into six patrol areas to
which 60 specially trained police officials were assigned,
with the freedom to develop their own patrol routine in
order to truly become familiar with the local problems and
to develop their role as co-authors of preventive rather than
100 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
repressive solutions. The officials were split among 26
neighborhoods within the six general patrol areas and
charged with the responsibility of fostering relationships
with shop owners, doormen, residents, newsstand vendors,
homeless people, and other community members by talking
on the street, inside cafes, bars, or shops in order to more
effectively identify and resolve problems in each sub-sector
(Freire et al., 1996).
The community was then required to be grouped into six committees or community councils. Members were recruited from
churches, schools, hotels, neighborhood committees, unions, business groups, banks, and other establishments and each council
worked with the police officers in their areas to identify threats to
public safety and to propose and implement solutions. Communications between the public and the police was further improved by
using suggestions boxes to lodge complaints about the police and
also report safety concerns in the neighborhood, and a hotline for
community members to call in incidents was established.
In São Paulo the military police adopted the community policing
philosophy with three main goals: (a) to integrate community opinion into improving quality of service, (b) to change the image of the
police force, and (c) to reduce crime. Forty-one locations were chosen out of which twenty-two were in the metropolitan area and
nineteen in the surrounding areas. The Consulting Commission for
the Implementation of Community Policing, comprised of police
representatives and civic organizations, held bi-weekly meetings
that served as a starting point for the development of a dialogue
between the police and the public. While the commission included
community members, military police commanders led the meetings
and set the agenda (Neto, 1998).
In his study, Kahn (2000) found that in districts with communitypolicing programs where the public had knowledge of the program,
fear of crime was reduced and public satisfaction with the police
increased. In addition, the results showed that more than half of
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 101
the surveyed respondents felt that the community police officers
were more educated, more accommodating, and less violent than
the traditional police. Yet, while the public viewed the community
police more positively than the traditional police on most measures,
the survey also showed that they believed that the traditional police
were more effective than community police, perhaps because
authoritarian populism tends to win the support of the masses for
the use of force even when the abusive use of force makes matters
worse. (Cavalcanti [2020] found that the police in Brazil are among
the main purveyors of street violence among the poor dwellers
of favelas.) While these programs may not directly reduce crime,
they function as a conduit to foster improved relations between the
community and the police and reduce fear among residents.
Israel
Brigadier General Danny Gimshi, a former police commissioner, was
exposed to the idea of community policing while at Harvard University as a Wexler Fellow at the Kennedy School. The formation
of community policing in Israel was seen as a total reformation of
the Israeli police. Gimshi (1994) noted that the responsibilities of
community policing included: training police officers, citizens, public officials at the city level and employees of other community services; developing community policing projects in police stations,
based on multiagency work and problem-oriented policing methods; and encouraging an organizational culture that would support
community policing within the Israeli National Police. He added that
the implementation of community policing would include:
• adopting activities that change the values, opinions, attitudes,
and job perception of police officers at all ranks of the organization;
• incorporating activities to initiate and develop programs and
organizational mechanisms to enhance cooperation between
the police, groups, and organizations in the broader community; and
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• giving the unit the responsibility for implementing community
policing for the Israeli National Police as a whole. In the first
year of the program four stations were chosen as models for
the initial implementation of community policing. A plan was
developed that called for the implementation of community
policing in all seventy police stations in the country by the year
2003.
After the country of Israel was established it faced a large wave of
immigration. The police were involved in what is called the absorption process, language instruction, and helping the communities
deal with natural or security emergencies at a time when Palestinians were being expelled en masse from their homes and the land
was being seized for the settlement of Jews. The oppressive policing
of the Palestinians contradict the claims that: “These roles, it should
be noted, are consistent with the important element of the community policing model, which seeks to broaden the police mandate
beyond crime control to other community problems” (Leighton,
1991, 1994; Sparrow, 1988; Sparrow et al., 1990).
There were so many programs that were developed in many parts
of Israel. In mid-1990 Asaf Chefetz brought the police and community together to identify drug dealers and problem locations in
Beit Dagon. The result was praised because it reduced drug activity in the area but the Israeli government also experimented with
the decriminalization of marijuana for medical uses. The police and
Naamat (a women’s advocacy organization) cooperated in responding to issues of family violence. Another program was also developed for drug addicts in cooperation with Narcotics Anonymous
groups in Beer Sheva and the evaluation of this program produced
encouraging findings (Yehezkeally and Shalev, 1995). Moreover, following the Oslo Accord, the Israeli government and the Palestinian
Authority agreed to allow the Palestinians to take over policing
responsibilities in Gaza and the West Bank; however, the policing
by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority remained mainly militarized.
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 103
Although community policing might appear to have been implemented in Israel, there were challenges of transitioning from a militarized type of policing to community policing. Community policing
in Israel also faced a lot of problems because the reformation it
sought was too ambitious. Community policing as was defined in
Israel required remaking of the Israeli police officer in terms of philosophy and behavior, a restructuring of police work, a restructuring of management within the police, a change in the relationship
between the police and the public, and a change in the priorities
of public work (Weisburd, Shalev, Amir, 2002). Perhaps community
policing would only be fully implemented in Israel when the conflict
with the Palestinians is resolved in a single federal republican solution with multiple states and equal rights for both Palestinians and
Jews.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has successfully operated a community policing scheme that in London every ward has a fully staffed neighborhood policing team. Police teams work in every ward in London
with local communities to fight crime and anti-social behaviors. It
was observed that people from communities expressed satisfaction
with the police presence in their neighborhoods, but people also
demanded more transparency and accountability regarding allegations of police brutality. With the work being done by the police
and community there is a significant decrease in crime, though
incarcerations remain high. The police, the local wardens, and other
stakeholders in the community meet regularly to identify problem
areas and means of solving the problems, but deaths in police custody and unsatisfactory investigation of racist violence have caused
widespread protests in some communities.
Policing in the United Kingdom has always embraced one of the
principles laid out by Robert Peel, that is, “the police are the public
and the public are the police.” However, at a certain time of their
history the police started to lose respect with the public and what
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used to be foot patrol was replaced by car patrol. Police stations no
longer functioned twenty-four hours and the gap between the public and police continued to widen, and as a result of this community
policing started to emerge in a number of Police Authorities in the
United Kingdom. The Scarman Report (Scarman and GBHO, 1982),
which followed the Brixton disorders of 1981, exposed some of the
shortcomings in police-community relations. The report identified
that the police service had become unresponsive and uncommunicative to the community. Policing was said to be police-oriented
not community oriented, with the need for policing to shift toward
a “service” ethos (Savage, 2007). Paul Gilroy (1982) warned that the
ideology of black criminality was being used by some left-wing
scholars to support the colonialist policing of black neighborhoods,
whereas there is no such thing as black criminality. Hall et al. (1979)
also warned that the oppressive policing of black communities due
to the media’s amplification of deviance would also affect poor
working-class white communities adversely.
The 2005–2006 British Crime Survey showed that despite
falling crimes level, approximately two-out-of-three survey respondents thought that nationally crime had increased from the previous
two years (Jansson, 2006). Even though the crime rate was low, the
public had little confidence in police service. This phenomenon led
to the development of what was known as “Reassurance Policing,”
launched to test the concept of community reassurance that was
aimed to reduce crime and disorder, increase public confidence,
and narrow the reassurance gap. It sought to reduce the fear of
crime and improve public confidence in the police through three
delivery mechanisms:
• engaging with communities to identify local concerns and priorities;
• targeting police resources at tackling these concerns; and
• creating a visible and accessible police presence (Tuffin, et al.,
2006).
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In November 2004 the government published the white paper
“Building Communities, Beating Crime” with the intention of
improving police accountability and increasing the level of engagement with the local community. Hence the birth of neighborhood
policing, which is the equivalent of community policing that emphasizes a physical presence of the police, public engagement, and the
prevention of crime. Agozino (2018) discovered that neighborhood
watch schemes were prejudiced against black people in the community who were often reported to the police as loitering with the
intent to commit crimes. He also found that the majority of black
women in prison in England and Wales were convicted of drugrelated offences and that innocent black women were often targeted by the police for violent attacks when they were known to be
proximate to suspected black men. Agozino recommends the decolonization of policing, the decriminalization of drugs, and the education of healthcare services to manage the harms of legally regulated
drugs.
The independent review of neighborhood policing conducted
by Sir Ronnie Flanagan recommended that neighborhood policing
should become a “core” activity of a police force’s business, occurring within and through local partnership structures to effectively
tackle crime, fear of crime, and quality of life issues. It stated that
neighborhood policing (and community engagement) should look
different in every neighborhood—there is no one size fits all. Flanagan identified three critical factors for ensuring successful delivery:
• visible, accessible, and locally known authority figures;
• community involvement; and
• strong relationships and joint working with partners (Flanagan,
2007, 2008).
Kenya
Kenya, like many other Africa countries, inherited the colonizing
country’s system of policing; but Kenya also suffers from the
unequal access to land due to the relative imposition of settler colo106 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
nialism that was resisted by the Mau Mau Land and Freedom Army.
Kenya played a leading role in peacekeeping in its region. While it
was playing this role there was a high level of insecurity in Kenya,
there were a lot of violent crimes involving firearms and this caused
a lot of social and economic problems in the poor communities
while the corrupt elites robbed the country blind. As a result of the
conflict in neighboring countries like Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, and
Ethiopia, refugees and illegal firearms were very common in Kenya
and this fueled such crimes as terrorism, armed robbery, carjacking, rape, and murder. The country was very unsuited and ill prepared to face the serious level of crime and infiltration of arms that
were pouring into the country. The police were highly politicized
and had very serious cases of human rights violations. The country also maintained two sets of police, the national police and the
administrative police, both with overlapping functions. This ambiguity between the two police forces called for police reform in
Kenya.
The Kenyan police were so intrigued with the success of community policing that in a conference on gun control in Kampala
in March 2002, and with mounting public pressure, the Office of
the President mandated the creation of a national steering committee on community policing. In mid-2002 the police and civil
society in Kenya recommended that moving toward CommunityBased Policing should be prioritized, with some key issues including
accountability, empowerment of local communities on safety and
security issue, partnerships between the police and public, improving public confidence and trust in the police, and greater access to
justice particularly for the poor and disadvantaged. The aim was to
reduce crime and fear of crime through a proactive and preventive
approach to policing (Saferworld, 2008).
When a new government took over in Kenya in 2003, it had a popular mandate to reform the police, and with a national consultation
the government was able to determine that the people were willing to support the police and be involved in their own policing. With
adoption of a Community-Based Policing it provided an avenue for
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 107
reform agenda that would be based on partnership, shared responsibility, greater transparency, and accountability.
When the community policing was established in Kenya there
were some challenges particularly the capacity of the various stakeholders to implement, train, and develop a national policy and
strategic planning. Kenya then launched two pilot sites for the initial
project. One site was Kibera, which is one of the worst and largest
slums in Africa. The unprecendented amount of poverty in Kibera
often forces youth to engage in petty crimes to supplement their
household’s income.
In Kibera the aim of the Community-Based Policing was to
reclaim peace and security for its residents and reduce the proliferation of small arms by building trust between the police and the
local communities. The police detailed that the primary factor fueling crime in Kibera as poverty, a lack of employment opportunities,
the breakdown of social relations, and danger related to poor living conditions (Saferworld, 2008). The Community-Based Policing
responded through a range of activities focused on crime prevention and victim support. The achievement of the Community-Based
Policing was very encouraging and included but not limited to:
• The sharing of information between communities and police
officers has helped police take action to prevent crime and
insecurity. Information boxes called “Toa Habari kwa polsi”
(volunteering information to the police) allow individuals to
pass information confidentially to police officers to prevent
and reduce crime.
• The Community-Based Policing forum gave the community an
opportunity to develop and implement initiatives to improve
safety such as building gates and perimeter fences around certain estates and sealing estate corridors to track the entry and
exit of individuals into the neighborhood.
• The Community-Based Policing program gave citizens in Kibera greater confidence to openly discuss the safety and security issues that confront them in their day-to-day lives.
108 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
Awareness—raising activities have empowered local communities to demand more support from their local political representatives (Saferworld, 2008).
The cooperation among the stakeholders in the Kibera community
is one of the main reasons that community-based policing has succeeded in this part of Kenya. The police, the business community,
the provincial administration, all developed a solid partnership for
the success of the program. The police with the cooperation of the
community feel better equipped for crime prevention.
The other pilot site for the Communiuty-Based Policing project
was Isiolo. This area has a very high level of unemployment, drug
abuse among the youth, a high rate of prostitution, and is described
as the armed supermarket of Kenya because of its location at the
gateway border of Ethiopia and Somalia where most illegal arms
are smuggled into Kenya. The crime problem led to the closure
of many schools in Isiolo, businesses were forced to relocate, and
cattle rustling was very common. Cattle rustling had a devastating
effect because the possession of cattle defines status.
A handful of organizations like and local communities, the police,
Arid Land Resources Management Project, District Peace Committee, PeaceNet, and Saferworld came together to develop community-based policing, and the result was equally very encouraging
just like in Kibera. The achievements were but not limited to:
• An increase in the number of incidents reported to the police
and dealt with. As the public felt more confident to report
criminal incidents, the police were able to deal more effectively with these cases and provide feedback to the community
on the steps taken and progress made.
• More people handed over their illegal small arms to the Peace
Building and Conflict Management Office, which works closely
with the Community-Based Policing Steering Committee. This
is managed by community representatives who transfer the
guns to Kenya Police officers for sale.
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 109
• The Kenya Police have opened a customer-care office in Isiolo
so that people can access information relating to their security
needs.
• Members of the community and police carry out joint patrol
activities in Bulla-Pesa.
• Initiatives to get young people involved in Community-Based
Policing activities have been organized enabling them to a play
key role in bringing about safety for their communities.
• Business is once again flourishing in Bulla-Pesa. There are now
five banks operating in the area, all of which had previously
closed down or relocated due to the problem of insecurity.
Furthermore, whereas shops in Bulla-Pesa were previously
forced to close before 6 p.m. because of insecurity, they are
now open until 9 p.m. (Saferworld, 2008).
The case of Kenya highlights the difficulties that the colonial
boundaries imposed on Africa pose for community policing.
Whereas the masses of Africans are mobile, crisscrossing the artificial colonial boundaries, and while terrorists and violent criminals
cross borders at will, the police are expected to stop enforcing the
law at the postcolonial national boundaries. We recommend the
visions of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and
Maumar Gaddafi for a union government that would erase those
divisive colonial boundaries and allow Africans to build the beloved
community across Africa. For instance, Somali refugees have lived
in Kenya for more than forty years and still they have no citizenship
rights in Kenya.
South Africa
With the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa an urgent need to
dismantle the apartheid police was among one of the expectations
of the people of South Africa. However, the apartheid state tried to
sabotage peace by orchestrating the third force that was suspected
to be behind the mass violence between the Inkatha Freedom Party
members and supporters of the African National Congress (ANC)
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before democratic elections. The crime rate in South Africa continued to be a major issue especially in black communities where the
murder rate is higher than in white neighborhoods. Unemployment,
poor housing, and poor education are problems in South Africa;
and immigrants from other African countries are often attacked by
xenophobes who blame immigrants for taking jobs away from poor
South Africans and for taking their women as wives while their languages were said to sound incomprehensibly like makwerekwere,
slang for foreigners in South Africa.
The legitimization of violence associated with political causes and
the view of violence as an acceptable means of resolving social,
political, and domestic conflicts have also given rise to a repressive
police culture of violence in South Africa, which is aggravated and
perhaps caused by the South African history of the authoritarian
and oppressive application of police force to maintain apartheid
(Interdepartmental Strategy Team, 1995). The vicious political violence that engulfed the country after the unbanning of the liberation movement in 1990 gave rise to South Africa’s community
policing. The Peace Accord signed between the government, the
ANC, and Inkatha stated the following:
The police shall endeavor to protect the people of South
Africa from all criminal acts and shall do so in a rigorously
non-partisan fashion, regardless of the political belief and
affiliation, race, religion, gender or ethnic origin of the perpetrators or victim of such acts…. The police shall be guided
by the belief that they are accountable to society in rendering their policing services and shall therefore conduct
themselves so as to secure and retain the approval of the
public. Through such accountability and friendly, effective
and prompt service, the police shall endeavor to obtain the
co-operation of the public whose partnership in the task
of crime control and prevention is essential (National Peace
Accord, 1991).
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 111
The five core elements of community policing in South Africa were
defined as (Pelser, 1999):
• Service orientation: the provision of a professional policing
service, responsive to community needs and accountable for
addressing these needs.
• Partnership: the facilitation of a cooperative, consultative
process of problem solving.
• Problem-solving: the joint identification and analysis of causes
of crime and conflict and the development of innovative measures to address these.
• Empowerment: the creation of joint responsibility and capacity
for addressing crime.
• Accountability: the creation of a culture of accountability for
addressing the needs and concerns of communities. This was
outlined primarily in terms of the functions of various structure like the national and provisional secretariats, the independent complaints directorate and members of the provisional
legislatures responsible for safety and security.
Some experts believe that community policing has been a failure in
South Africa because the model does not work with countries that
are struggling with basic governance. With one of the highest crime
rates in the world, South Africa needed every mechanism possible to reduce its crime rate. One important aspect of policing in
South Africa is that it has gone through some changes since 1994
in terms of organization and democratization. It went from a militarized force, to autocratic and bureaucratic, to what is known as a
service model characterized by participation and problem solving.
But the mass killing of striking mine workers at Marikana in August
2012 indicated that the militarized policing of impoverished Africans
in the interest of the capitalist class was still the norm.
The Roodekran Neighborhood Watch and community policing
experienced a lot of success the first three years of its establishment, including:
112 | Models/Best Practices of Community Policing
• establishing a dedicated and well-structured management
committee consisting of twenty members occupying different
portfolios;
• establishing and maintaining a website with key information
about crime prevention (www.roodekranswatch.org);
• maintaining and strengthening their relationship with the
police, security companies, and local organizations such as
churches, as well as the business community;
• increasing the number of street sheriffs to 122;
• providing regular convoy patrols with the police and security
companies in order to create mass visibility in a highly organized anti-crime campaign; and
• creating the Business Watch to mobilize the business community in the campaign against crime and incorporate businesses
into a membership structure (Meyer et al., 2011).
*****
Community policing is not one size fits all. In defining community
we must bear in mind that it includes a group of people living in the
same area with the same history and understanding of themselves,
that they have some common interests and common-specific areas
served by the police. Communities have a sense of belonging, sense
of value or sometimes identify with a hometown. From our studies it
can be concluded that a department-wide use of community policing can achieve a number of results, including: considerable reduction in crime and disorder, improvement in the quality of life for
residents, more positive attitudes toward the police, and the prevention and reduction of the fear of crime. It also improves policecommunity relations, increases the flow of information between the
police and the community, and increases the level of work satisfaction for most police officers.
We commend the government of South Africa for legalizing dagga,
or marijuana, instead of using it as an excuse to keep sending lots of
young Africans to prison for a substance that is safer than tobacco
and alcohol. Other African countries should follow this example
Models/Best Practices of Community Policing | 113
instead of sheepishly following the war on drugs imposed by the
West. South Africa has also led by abolishing the death penalty,
legalizing same-sex relations, and including land reform in the
democratic constitution. A United Republic of African States should
follow suit in order to build the Ubuntu of Desmond Tutu.
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5. Community Policing
Implementation Issues
Our focus in this chapter is on the implementation of community
policing. With the general increase in crime around the world, public officials in most societies herald community policing as the longawaited solution to the problem. In Nigeria, the government and
community leaders are beginning to recognize that the National
Police, as currently conceptualized, simply cannot handle the challenge alone. There can never be enough police officers to monitor
all of the potential sources of crime that occur everyday within
Nigeria. They also must accept responsibility for keeping their
neighborhoods safe. The implementation of community policing
(CP) necessitates fundamental changes in the structure and management of police organizations. Implementing CP raises a host of
complex issues. What structural changes are necessary? Can the
current police personnel be changed, or do we need to recruit new
people? Do we have enough external support? Do communities have
sufficient capacity to engage with the police? Can communities
develop partnerships with the police? Who takes the lead in this
process, the community or the police?
Understanding Community Policing
It is important to be clear about what we mean when we talk about
community policing. Community policing refers to a philosophical
position about the role and functions of the police. It demands that
the goals of policing, the conditions that it addresses, the means
used to address them, and assessments of police success, should be
developed and formulated with reference to the distinctive, experiences and special structures of local communities (Weisburd and
McElroy, 1988). As defined by the Community Policing Consortium,
CP consists of two core components: community partnership and
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problem solving (US Department of Justice, 1994). Community-oriented policing recognizes that community problems require community-engaged solutions and support. Accordingly, the phrase
“community-oriented policing” as per Security Council Resolution
2185 (2014) is defined as: “a strategy for encouraging the public to
act as partners with the police in preventing and managing crime as
well as other aspects of security and order based on the needs of the
community” (UN Peace Operations, 2018: 6). Skogan (2006), defines
CP as an organizational strategy whose primary elements are citizen
involvement, problem solving, and decentralization. Efforts have
been made to create a much more comprehensive definition of CP
by Scheider et al. (2009: 697) as: “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the
immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues, such as
crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.”
From the definitions one can distill the core common principles
of the CP philosophy. These include: community mobilization, problem-solving, partnerships, and organizational transformation.
Community
When the term “community” is used, the first notion that typically
comes to mind is a place in which people know and care for one
another the kind and place where people do not merely ask, “How
are you?” as a formality, but they care about the answer (Etzioni,
1993: 31); but the term has a variety of meanings. Generally, a community is conceived of as a group of people occupying the same
geographical area by which they can identify themselves and in
which a degree of solidarity exists (McNall and McNall, 1992: 179).
Thus, it is about both territorial settlement and social relationships
(Palmioto, 2011). From a geographical perspective, community is
used to identify local, small geographical units with communal relationships, such as villages, towns, or neighborhoods (Gusfield,
1975:32–33). In Africa, the town villages and autonomous communi-
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ties (as in the villages in the South East states of Nigeria) fit neatly
into this category. This is a rural community. But community can
also be used to describe larger units, such as whole cities as in the
urban areas/cities of Africa. This is an urban community.
A rural community consists of a group of families living on contiguous land who generally think of themselves as living in the same
locality, to which they give a name, and who interact with one
another through visiting, borrowing, exchanging services, or participating in social activities (Palmioto, 2011). These common activities
include schools, places of worship, businesses, and such. The urban
community usually consists of a larger group (than the rural community) of people living in a small geographical area who have their
own local government and carry on various economic enterprises.
Urban communities are generally more heterogeneous. The dynamics of the urban community to a large extent are different from the
rural communities, so the CP strategies will be different.
One of the basic arguments of this chapter is that for community
policing to be a success, there must exist a sense of community.
The officers involved in CP must understand, and more important,
strive to create and reinforce a sense of community. This is “a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a
shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan and Chavis, 1986: 9). There must
also be community empowerment for CP to be successful. This is
“the process by which people organize, attain a collective objective,
and learn about their own personal power” (Heskin, 1991: 63). An
empowered community is structured in such a way that members
have the opportunity to participate in local activities while being
responsible to other members of the community (Heskin, 1991:64).
For CP to be successfully implemented in Africa, it is essential to
start the process at the local level (families and neighborhoods) and
then gradually expand it to encompass larger and larger units, from
local villages and towns to the states and national government.
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Problem Solving
Problem solving is an analytic approach for systematically identifying community problems, collecting and analyzing information
about the problems, developing and implementing responses that
have the potential to eliminate or reduce problems, and evaluating
the responses to determine their effectiveness (Scheider et al.,
2009). Problem solving involves going beyond traditional police
responses to crime to proactively addressing problems that are
of concern to communities. Problem solving assumes that crime
and disorder can be reduced in small geographic areas by carefully
studying the characteristics of problems in the area and then applying the appropriate resources (US Department of Justice, 1994).
Advocates of CP have stressed that the very nature of police work
must be altered from its present incident-by-incident, case-by-case
orientation to one that is more problem oriented (Goldstein, 1990).
While not ignoring the traditional case-by case approach, whenever possible, attention should be directed toward underlying problems and conditions. Following the medical analogy, policing should
address causes as well as symptoms, and should adopt the epidemiological public health approach as well as the individual doctor’s
clinical approach (Cordner, 1995).
The problem-solving process consists of four steps: a careful
identification of the problem, a careful analysis of the problem, a
search for alternative solutions to the problem, and an implementation and assessment of a response to the problem. Determining
the underlying causes of crime depends to a great extent on an indepth knowledge of community. The incorporation of community
inputs will be crucial in all the steps of the process. Analysis is the
heart of the problem-solving process. The objectives of the analysis are to develop an understanding of the dynamics of the problem and develop an understanding of cause and effect. As part of
the analysis phase, it is important to find out as much as possible
about each aspect of the crime triangle by asking, who, what, when,
118 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
where, how, why, and why not about the victim, offender, and crime
location (Spelman and Eck, 1989).
Partnerships
Most of the explanations of CP share the idea that the police should
engage others in their efforts. CP encourages law enforcement
agencies to have multidisciplinary partnerships with government
agencies, community members and groups, service providers, private businesses, and the media (Scheider, et al., 2009). Participation
of the community in its own protection is one of the central elements of CP (US Department Justice, 1994). We will argue in this
chapter that communities take the lead in this partnership building
and not the police. Most communities in Africa used to maintain
law and order by themselves before they were colonized. For example, the Igbo society of the South Eastern States of Nigeria had villages and communities that were completely self-governing, which
included maintaining law and order. How communities maintained
law and order without the police could be an asset and input in the
planning and implementation of CP. Effective community partnerships and problem solving will require the mastery of new responsibilities and the adoption of a flexible style of management that is
explained below.
Organizational Transformation
Policing, like other occupations, has developed a unique culture.
There is no question that when people work together for any length
of time, they generate patterns of thinking, behaving, and feeling.
The development of a unique understanding of the world and
shared values and behavioral norms separate occupational members
from nonmembers, which means that police and citizens will
inevitably see things differently. To reconcile these different worldviews, what is needed is a fundamental transformation of police
management, structure, personnel, and information systems to
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 119
institutionalize community partnerships and proactive problemsolving efforts (Scheider et al., 2009).
The traditional police organizational structure seems more suited
to routine, bureaucratic work than to the discretion and creativity
required for CP. Three important organizational transformation elements of CP are structure, management, and information. The types
of restructuring suited for CP include: decentralization, flattening
the layers of hierarchy, and getting the police and community members to work in teams. Under CP, command will no longer be centralized, and many decisions will come from the bottom
(communities) instead of from the top down. This transformation in
command structure is very crucial to the creation of meaningful and
productive ties between the community and the police.
The transition to CP requires recognizing that the new responsibilities and decision-making power of the communities and the
community police officers must be supported, guided, and encouraged by the entire organization. There is the need for detailed information based on communities as the unit of analysis. The emphasis
on problem solving highlights the need for information systems that
aid in identifying and analyzing community-level problems.
Implementing Community-Oriented Policing
Nigeria’s Experiences in Implementing Community Policing
The idea of community policing is not new to Nigeria. The country
has some experiences in implementing CP. The British Department
of International Development (DFID) in 2003, through its Security,
Justice, and Growth (SJG) program, sent seven police officers on
a study tour to the United Kingdom to examine examples of CP.
Similarly, the MacArthur Foundation facilitated more study tours to
study CP in the Houston Police Department in the United States.
Police officers who participated in these study tours formed the
Community Policing Project Team. (Iwar, 2010) The Project Team
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developed the Community Policing Project Plan with the following
two aims:
1. To facilitate the development of community policing throughout Nigeria.
2. To examine the policies, strategies, structures, and organization of the Nigerian Police, to ensure that the applicable principles and core values of community policing are enshrined in
the professional performance, ethics, and codes of conduct of
the Nigerian Police.
The Project Plan consisted of the following six interrelated elements
that formed the basis for the implementation strategy:
• Manage and deliver an awareness, sensitization, and information sharing campaign on CP.
• Implement CP training for officers in the states.
• Examine and develop the current training and development
function.
• Examine and develop current organizational structures to
drive CP.
• Develop an intelligence-led policing style, including new technology and science.
• Examine laws, police processes, and procedures.
The Community Policing Project was launched in Enugu State in
April 2004 by the then secretary to the federal government and the
inspector general of police (IGP). The project team achieved the followings:
• Organized multirank sensitization workshops for five thousand
police personnel at federal and state levels.
• Trained about fifty community policing developers (CPDs).
• CPD officers worked directly with the police divisions in Enugu
State to develop attitudes and behaviors that will enable positive outcomes within the police and communities.
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 121
Further specific achievements include:
• The establishment of a Community Policing Office within the
“F” Department at Headquarters and replication of that in all
State Commands.
• All State Commands have functional Community Policing
Offices staffed with trained and experienced personnel, supporting and assisting in the development of various aspects of
community policing principles, particularly partnerships,
problem solving, and intelligence-led policing.
• At the divisional level, the concept of neighborhood policing
with Dedicated Policing Teams (DPT) to manage microbeats
has been introduced with the following personnel structures:
(a) community policing developers (CPD); (b) community safety
officers (CSP); (c) human rights officers (HRO); (d) community
policing officers (CPO); (e) neighborhood watch support officers (NWSO); (f) divisional intelligence officers (DIO) and; (g)
conflict resolution officers (CRO) (Iwar, 2010).
The implementation of CP in Nigeria had the support of top politicians. Following an assessment of the program in Enugu State, the
then IGP approved an extension of the community policing pilot
to cover five more states: Benue, Jigawa, Kano, Ondo, and Ogun. A
report by Stone et al., (2005) stated that Nigeria offers good examples of what has been possible to accomplish in the safety and justice sectors in a situation where “conflict and violence in various
forms are a fact of life.” How successful the implementation of CP in
Nigeria has been so far will be a very good study. Considering the
rapid increase in crime in Nigeria, one could argue that the efforts
to implement CP in Nigeria was bedeviled by economic and institutional contexts that resulted in a considerable lack of resources and
a fundamental lack of trust by communities. To effectively implement CP in Nigeria will require putting in place institutions and
practices that support democratic policing.
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Creating Facilitating Institutions or Structures
There are two main aspects of CP: CP that is directed by the communities and supported by the police and CP led and directed by the
police and supported by the communities. It is still not clear which
strand will be implemented in Nigeria. Communities in Nigeria differ
from one another. Some communities have national police posts,
while others do not have a full police presence. The choice of which
aspect a community will choose will vary because some communities are rural, and the others are urban. However, what is common
and fundamental to both aspects is that the goals of policing, and
the conditions that they will address, should be developed and formulated with reference to the distinctive mores, experiences, and
special structures of local communities.
It is important to note that in Nigeria and many African countries,
it could be argued that policing never left the community in the
sense that self-policing continues to be a fact of life in societies that
cannot rely on the national public police. The capacity to provide
a well-resourced, twenty-four-hour policing service for all members of a community is restricted to the world’s richest countries.
Those living in the poor countries like Nigeria may have to simply
get by with semblance of indigenous or traditional processes of justice that are still functioning, but with some limitations. The contrast between CP approaches in rich countries and poor developing
countries may be that in the rich countries, they are focused on the
police searching for community, while in the poor countries it is the
community in search of policing (Wisler and Onwudiwe, 2009).
Efforts to introduce CP in poor countries frequently run into
difficulties. Policing in these countries is bedeviled by weak economic and institutional contexts that result in a considerable lack
of resources for policing and a fundamental lack of trust by communities. Most people in Nigeria tend to run away at the sight of
a policeman. The Yoruba’s of South West Nigeria call the police
olo pa (meaning go and kill). Such perceptions that emanated from
the activities of the colonial police will need to be eradicated to
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 123
build harmony and trust between communities and the police. The
implementation of CP in Nigeria could follow the following phases:
(a) establishing civil guard units in all villages and urban areas; (b)
establishing community-policing units in all local government
headquarters; and (c) establishing a police-community bureau in the
state capitals.
Civil Guard Units/Village Police
A central idea of CP is that the community plays an important role
in defining the problems the police are to address and the strategies they should use. The national police in many African countries
have demonstrated that they are incapable of maintaining peace and
order in the society. Most communities have resorted to creating
civil guards. They are called various names in Nigerian states. Some
call it forest guards or village police. The civil guard includes volunteers from all walks of life including the unemployed youth in the
communities, retired police officers, and village artisans. The role of
the civil guard is to help organize community/neighborhood crime
prevention and to observe and collect data on neighborhood problems and groups that might cause crime and disorder. These are
informal security institutions that can be formalized by working out
operational linkages with the national police. It will also be important to agree on the incentives to sustain these units. It is envisaged
that the civil guards should be managed by the village government
or chiefs.
Community-Policing Units
Community policing requires a localized element to policing and
close interactions between the police and public about policing priorities. To achieve this, there is a need to establish communitypolicing units in all the local government headquarters in a state.
The responsibilities of the community-policing unit will include:
training police officers and members of the civil guards on strategies for maintaining law and order; assisting civil guards in devel124 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
oping village security plans; and creating an organizational culture
that would support community policing within the national police.
Police Community Bureau/Community Police Advisory Commission
The Police Community Bureau could be established in each state
capital of the federation. Its main functions are: building the capacities of the community-policing units; develop training programs
and organizational mechanisms to enhance cooperation between
the police, groups, and organizations in the broader community;
and maintain an oversight of the practices by community-policing
units and the civil guard units.
Planning the Implementation of Community Policing
The implementation of a community-policing strategy is a complex
process that requires planning and managing for change (US
Department of Justice, 1994). Community policing cannot be established through a mere modification of existing policy; profound
changes must occur at every level in the community and the police
agency. Before CP can be implemented to any degree, a plan must
be established to address the needs of the communities and the
police agencies.
Community and Police Agency Capacity Assessments
A crucial step in planning and implementing CP is assessing the
fit between core strategies and local conditions both in the police
and communities (United Nations, 2018). Although every community
has different traditions and capacities, several are fundamentally
important to the practice of community-oriented policing anywhere. These factors fall into two primary categories:
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 125
1. The nature, sensitivities, and capacities of the communities
with which the police must work; and
2. The capacity and capabilities of the police to be responsive,
consultative, mobilizing, and problem solving.
Strategic Joint Planning by Communities and the Police
A well thought out strategic plan of five years should be jointly
prepared by communities and community-policing units, and then
it should be coordinated by the Community Policing Bureau. One
main question is how far ahead and how extensively should planning
a CP program take before putting it into operation. (US Department
of Justice, 1994) outlined three possible approaches.
1. Plan, then implement. This method entails developing a
detailed long-range plan with tasks and timelines delineated.
2. Plan and implement. In this approach, planning and action
occur simultaneously. While the planning continues, certain
aspects of CP could be implemented. The process entails
learning while doing.
3. Implement with little planning. This approach goes into implementation with little or no planning. It assumes that a limited
knowledge of communities will not allow for adequate planning.
Planning for community policing should be between the communities and the police agency. A strategic plan created without the
involvement and blessing of the community being served and the
police agency is doomed to failure. Active community members,
along with persons who reflect the diversity of the community,
should be made members of the strategic planning team. Women
should be members of the committee. Community team members
should represent the interest of school authorities, business owners, farmers, religious organizations, and others. Also, all personnel
in the community-policing unit/s should be involved in planning.
126 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
After setting the vision and mission of community policing, the plan
should be developed guided by the following three questions:
1. Where do we want to be? This is the process of strategically
setting goals.
2. Where are we now? What is the current position? What
resources do we have? What limitations or barriers are we facing?
3. How do we get there from here? What policies and programs
will allow us to achieve the goals (Fyfe et al., 1997: 214–15)?
Once the communities and the police have specified goals, assessed
needs, resources and barriers, and specified a sequence of actions
to attain goals, they must work out more details of how the plan
will be implemented. The community-policing implementation plan
should describe how policing activities will be monitored. Mechanisms for assessing whether the objectives of the plan are being
achieved must be established from the beginning, as part of the
planning process, and assessment must be a continuing process.
Sample Action Plan for Community Policing
The elements of a sample action plan for CP will include the following:
1. Assessment: Thoroughly assess the current community-oriented policing capacity of communities and the police agency.
Looking at the experiences of the Nigerian Police on CP,
aspects of CP are being delivered partially in compartmented
siloes and the various communities organizing the youths as
local vigilantes. The results of the assessment could be the
baseline for measuring success.
2. Engage/persuade key stakeholders to adopt CP principles: The
key stakeholders are: state government political leaders; police
senior executive officers, especially the commissioner of
police; and community leaders, such as chiefs, local councilors,
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 127
school administrators, relevant religious leaders, and so forth.
3. Create/strengthen a multilevel implementation task force: Community-policing implementation task forces should be created
at the community, local government, state, and national levels.
Community policing that requires community participation,
organizational change, and sustained funding will require community support and direction at high levels of the police command. A common way of achieving this is through the creation
of a task force that will articulate the demands of the communities (at the bottom) and report directly to the state governor
and the state commissioner of police. Each community should
nominate the members of the task force in which the chief of
the village should be the head of the task force. The head of the
local government should be the head of the Local Government
Area task force, and the local government police chief will be
the deputy or the co-chair. The heads of the community task
force members should all be members of the local government
task force.
4. Develop and publish a CP implementation plan: On the basis of
assessments of community institutions and capacities, the task
forces should formulate practices that can be implemented
with a reasonable expectation of acceptance by the local police
and communities.
5. Develop criteria for evaluating the performance of CP, police
officers, and the village guards: The performance of officers and
community/village guards assigned to CP must be evaluated.
The task forces should as a matter of priority develop criteria
for performance evaluation.
Issues that are likely to impact the implementation of CP can be
classified into three: (a) the capacity of communities to plan, organize, and engage with the police; (b) the receptivity of the police
organization to work with the communities; and (c) the governmental commitment to the CP initiative.
128 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
Capacity of Communities
The definition of CP may vary, but all share the idea that the police
and the community must work together to identify problems affecting the community and to develop solutions. This is a departure
from the era of traditional policing in which police claimed a
monopoly of responsibility for crime control. In this new dispensation of CP, communities need to develop a partnership with the
police. For this partnership to work two main things need to happen: citizens must understand the dynamics in their communities
and how the police functions; and the police have to understand the
inner workings of the community.
Communities also need to be empowered. Empowerment is the
processes by which people organize, attain a collective objective,
and learn about their own personal power (Heskin, 1991: 63). An
empowered community is structured in a way that provides members with the opportunity to participate in community activities and
to be responsible for the community, and its members are willing to
use that structure (Heskin, 1991: 64). However, there are some issues
in stimulating community involvement. These include:
1. Community members fear of retaliation by the troublemakers in
the community. There are possibilities that some of the criminal elements in a community will attack community members
seen to be associating with the police. The role of CP is to
make community members feel safer. But, if community policing is unable to reduce fear to the degree necessary to allow
community members to feel safe enough to police themselves,
some aspects of traditional policing could be introduced.
2. Historically poor police-community relations. It has been generally observed that some community members do not really
want closer contact with the police. The sight of the police in
some communities creates apprehension. This has an historical explanation. The police as we know it now was an institution created by the colonial government to suppress the
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 129
“natives.” In Nigeria, the police for more than a century
(between 1861–1960) were involved in the brutal suppression of
indigenous peoples (Ahire, 1991; Tamuno, 1970). Though all
countries are independent now, that legacy of suppression of
the so called “civilians” still persists. The Nigerian government
failed to reorient the police toward embracing democratic values. The subsequent postcolonial democratic and military
administrations used the police to enforce all sorts of authoritarian and anti-people laws and practices, further deepening
the culture of violence that the police had inherited. For CP to
work, there is a strong need to reform the police in which one
of the central objectives will be among others transforming the
doctrine of the African police.
3. Intragroup conflict. A common barrier to organizing CP is conflict among community leaders. This could take the form of
disagreements about which issues are to be addressed and
how tasks are to be delegated. It is important to note that
communities are often aggregates of competing groups. Simply
because people live in the same geographic area and share the
same class background does not guarantee that they share all
the same values or define problems the same way. This problem can be solved through the joint planning processes discussed earlier.
4. Community policing “champions.” The lack of CP champions in
communities and police departments could be a problem.
There is the need for key players at all levels to continue to
champion its development.
Receptivity of the Police Organization
The implementation of CP will require its principles to be incorporated into the police organization. For several reasons, the police
personnel tend to resist change. The early stages of implementing
CP are not easy. Like any set organization it would be difficult
to convince police officers to accept the new roles and behaviors
130 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
required for community policing. Skolnick and Bayley (1988) identified the following obstacles to implementing CP within police
departments:
1. The traditional culture of policing. This includes the defensive
attitude of suspicion that officers develop to deal with the
public. Because citizens can be dangerous, police may not be
inclined to develop closer relations with them. There is mutual
distrust between police and civilians.
2. The centralized, hierarchical, quasi military command structure
of traditional policing. Most countries in Africa, such as Nigeria,
have nationally run police agencies. Community policing
requires a decentralization of authority and a reorganization of
the command structure to give lower-level officers more flexibility and initiative and to increase bottom-up communication.
Governmental Commitment to the Community-Policing
Initiative
There needs to be a clear commitment from the most senior levels
of government and policing to community-policing reform
processes, to other measures that increase police accountability,
and to firm action on key contextual issues such as corruption,
human rights abuses, and excessive use of force by the police. Some
of the indicators on political will and commitment are:
1. Lack of a national policy on CP. The lack of a strategic national
policy on CP in Nigeria with guidelines, plans, and an implementation mechanism constitutes a big challenge. The lack of
a national policy will create confusion as to what the concept
means in practice.
2. Sufficient resources for implementing CP. The implementation
of CP reform requires considerable resources for training, support, new equipment, and projects such as the redesign of
police stations to make them more accessible to the public.
3. Pay, motivation, and morale of police. Police who are poorly
Community Policing Implementation Issues | 131
paid and have low morale are not likely to be motivated to
work with communities. Low pay may also mean that policing
tends to attract poorly educated police from more marginalized sections of the society. This can result in a general lack of
respect for policing as an occupation.
******
In conclusion, the outlook for community policing in Nigeria is
positive. All stakeholders seem to want it. Many police departments
in the country have made great strides in implementing CP. The
police are better educated today than at any time in the past, and
we can expect this trend to continue, with training expanded to
include problem solving as well as law enforcement. We can expect
in the future that the community will play a larger role in community policing. Since in Nigeria, it is the community that is in search
of the policing, the communities should take the lead and set the
agenda. Eventually community-oriented policing will evolve into a
community-oriented government.
132 | Community Policing Implementation Issues
Conclusion
The outlook for community policing in Nigeria is positive. All stakeholders seem to want it. Many police departments in the country
have made great strides to implement some form of CP. In this conclusion we look at how to move community policing in Nigeria from
rhetoric to action. The increasing incidents of crime since the end
of the civil war, and the military regimes that resulted, led to a proliferation of armed vigilante groups in all zones and regions. This
is because the Nigerian Police cannot effectively maintain order.
The inability of NPF to effectively deal with the security challenges
confronting the country led some state governments to encourage villages to form local security groups, which are known by various names—Amotekun (South West zone); Forest Guard (South East
zone), Shege Ka Fasa (Northern Region), and so forth. Now virtually
all the states and the six political zones in Nigeria have regional/and
or state-based internal security outfits. These can be transformed
into community policing before they evolve into regional militias.
Community Policing versus Policing Communities
These twin concepts are particularly important to bear in mind as
we formulate a new approach to CP. The two concepts look similar,
but they are fundamentally different if closely examined. While CP
demands close a community-police partnership, policing communities is the traditional policing model of law enforcement. Most of
the experiences globally in community policing are, to say the least,
mild forms of the traditional model of policing communities. The
communities are at best tools in the partnership arrangement that
in most cases are not sustainable. What we are advocating is community policing that is truly community led. Community policing
can only occur when citizens set the agenda and take direct responsibility for guarding one another’s safety, only inviting the police
when things are otherwise unmanageable.
| 133
This kind of CP, in which community members work directly with
one another, had been in practice in most African communities
long before colonialism. Traditional African policing methods were
rooted in the community and closely interlinked with social and
religious structures. The enforcement of traditional laws was carried out by community structures such as age-grades, secret societies, vocational guilds (for example, hunters, farmers, black-smiths,
and such) (Arase, 2018). Through these systems of crime control, law
and order was maintained, largely without the use of violence. The
precolonial African society saw the task of policing as that of the
entire society and policing functions were undertaken by members
of the community. Just like in Nigeria and other African societies,
policing in preindustrial Europe had also been a local community
affair. One could argue that the art of policing has always been a
communal duty. It has been observed that a common denominator
among countries with the best police forces across the world is that
their policing framework is community-oriented and citizen-driven
(Arase, 2018).
Toward a New Approach to Community Policing in Africa
Community Initiative
It is becoming noticeably clear that the modern policing model
introduced by colonial authorities are increasingly failing to deliver
law and order in most African countries. Communities are now
developing their local/community security outfits. Arase (2013)
pointed out some local African examples.
In Kenya, faced with the challenge of cattle rustling, two villages
formed a security system. They selected a commandant and an
assistant and hired five police reservists. Some citizens donated
vehicles and other kits while the communities contributed to pay
them little stipends. The Kenyan Police established a radio connection with the reservists and daily monitored and regulated their
134 | Conclusion
activities. Cattle rustling declined significantly in those affected
communities.
In South Sudan the Market Association in Yei arranged with the
police that when any trader is arrested for any crime, he or she is
handed over to the association. The association resolves the issue
and reports their resolutions to the police. This arrangement has
been successful in preventing the escalation of relatively low-level
disputes, thereby reducing the burden on the police and the criminal justice system.
In Uganda, the Taxi Drivers Association has an agreement with
the police that allows the association to police taxi and bus parks in
respect of traffic offences, pickpockets, and other disputes between
drivers and passengers, while exchanging criminal intelligence with
the police. The police on their part, offer the association’s members
training in crime control and prevention.
In Sierra Leone, some communities in the South have established
mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. The Bo Peace
and Reconciliation movement (BPRM) is a coalition of eleven community groups working on peacebuilding, reconciliation, and crime
prevention in the Bo District in partnership with the local police.
Its twenty local peace monitors have resolved many conflicts such
as family matters, fighting, land cases, and such. Their work has
reduced communal conflict and litigation in the law courts.
In Nigeria there is a lot of local and regional security initiatives
in response to increasing security challenges. For example, at the
peak of the Jos (North Central Nigeria) crises, a community security
arrangement was formed in which Christians were engaged to
secure Muslims during Juma’at prayers, and Muslims in turn provided security for Christians during Sunday church services, all in
partnership with the local police. This innovative community policing security model became extremely useful in dealing with security challenges in Plateau State. Another example is in the Northeast
geopolitical zone, where youth, with the support of different components of the local community, volunteered to complement the
state by forming themselves into vigilante and community defense
Conclusion | 135
bodies to defend their communities against terror attacks. The civilian JTF, as they are called, drew strength from their local knowledge
of the population such that they can easily identify and thereby isolate strangers and locals linked to terrorism and other crimes. Yet
another local and regional security initiative is in the South East
geopolitical zone, where the Enugu State government established
forest guards. The government provides them with vehicles, security tools, uniforms, and a salary. Since the establishment of the
forest guards in Enugu, the number of security incidents has been
reduced. Yet the federal security agents went to a meeting in Emene
on 23 August 2020 and, according to news reports, opened fire on
people who were meeting peacefully, killing dozens of them and
wounding more. The families of the victims of such violent policing
should be supported to sue the federal government for substantial
damages as part of the efforts to encourage community policing and
defund or abolish militarized policing.
Furthermore, in Nigeria, some regions have started forming
regional security outfits to coordinate their responses to the
increasing insecurity in the country. The South Western states of
Nigeria, namely, Lagos State, Oyo State, Ogun State, Ondo State,
Osun State, and Ekiti State, on 9 January 2020, established, the
region’s security outfit, Operation Amotekun. In support of the outfit, all the six state governors contributed twenty vehicles. The
states also procured one hundred motorcycles each, making a total
of six hundred motorcycles. The operatives of the security outfit
will assist police, other security agencies, and traditional rulers in
combating terrorism, banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping, and help
in settling herdsmen and farmers contentions in the regions. In
response to the establishment of Amotekun, the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) from Northern Nigeria formed its own regional
security outfit, codenamed Shege-Ka-Fasa. The South Eastern zone
seems to have adopted the forest guard model as its regional outfit.
The above cases are not examples of communities policing themselves; they are examples of state agencies and local elites arming
some people in real communities to police them without much
136 | Conclusion
accountability to the communities. As observed, they all may yield
positive results with minimal investments, but they also run the risk
of being abused by politicians who may use them as armed thugs
to intimidate their opponents. The democratic model of community policing through neighborhood watch, closed-circuit television
cameras, peace-making committees, and nonviolent methods may
be the future model of CP for Africa, which has suffered enough
from armed conflicts. The first strand is a community policing that
starts from the bottom (communities) and then is supported by government agencies with the long-term expectation of the work of
policing being everybody’s concern.
The Americans will say “see something, say something,” but guarantees for anonymity, due process, and fairness should be emphasized. The second strand is the total remaking of the Nigerian Police
officer in terms of philosophy and behavior, which entails a change
in the relationship between the police and communities. This
should be done very quickly before the regional security formations
start colliding with the national police. Nigeria and most African
countries will need police reforms that deal with three main issues:
(a) making/putting community policing at the center of the Nigerian Police; (b) embarking on the full professionalization of the police;
(c) shifting resources away from the militarized colonial policing
models and investing more in schools and hospitals for harm reduction; and (d) training community members on scientific methods of
investigation and conflict resolution.
In line with the warning of Stan Cohen against what he called
“made-for-export criminology” of the sort that tries to impose on
developing countries, the very methods and theories that have
abjectly failed in industrialized countries to guarantee order in the
places that they were designed for, talk less about alien conditions
in Africa, we follow Clifford Shearing and Mike Brogden in suggesting that the West does not know best when it comes to the policing of the New South Africa. Thus, we recommend the decentering
of the police when it comes to community policing. We are aware
of calls for the defunding of the police arising from the use of lethal
Conclusion | 137
violence against African Americans just as is the case in neocolonial
Africa. We subscribe to the view that “African Lives Matter” in Africa,
and so the police should be discouraged from continuing to play the
role of a colonial occupying army, one that is imposed to conquer
and subjugate Africans to systems of unequal exchange with the rest
of the world in the interest of the phantom bourgeoisie (as identified
by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth and condemned by Rodney
in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa). Agozino calls for the same
African philosophy of nonviolence that Pepinsky advocates in Criminology as Peacemaking by stating that:
The Africana philosophy of non-violence that Gandhi
claimed that he learned from the warlike Zulu… promises to
be a sociologically sophisticated and methodologically validated response to the error of terror and the ire in satire.
Echoing this philosophy in three speeches in 1968 about the
non-violent response to the error of Jim Crow terrorism,
about the terror in Vietnam and about apartheid South
Africa, Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the world that we
are like the descendants of a great writer who left a “World
House” to be inherited by us all: we must learn to live
together peacefully and in love or fight and burn the house
down…. Chinua Achebe drew from his Igbo culture to identify the world house as Mbari, a miniature sculpture that is
made by the entire community and with each race, gender
and class represented under one roof…. Desmond Tutu used
the philosophy of Ubuntu or the bundle of humanity to represent the same concept of forgiveness and loving kindness
as the best response to the error of terror and the ire of
satire…. Sociological theory should pay attention to these
original theoretical developments and move away from the
navel-gazing obsession with only the ideas of dead white
men especially when looking for solutions to the error of
terror that is rooted in the foundation of fundamentalism
138 | Conclusion
in the philosophy of patriarchal imperialist white supremacy
(Agozino, 2014).
The agency of African women who policed their communities nonviolently dates back to the Maroon communities during slavery and
to the underground railroad of Harriet Tubman. The tradition continued during the Women’s War of 1929 against colonial taxation
without representation and against warrant chiefs, during the
Abeokuta women’s uprising against colonial chiefs who molested
young girls in the guise of tax assessment, by Kikuyu women against
forced labor in Kenya, by South African women against apartheid,
by Somali women who defied clannish violence to provide feeding,
healthcare, and schooling, and by Liberian women who prayed. We
believe that the imposition of Western militarism over Africans for
hundreds of years has relatively eroded our knowledge of the technologies of love and peacemaking, but we still retain self-efficacy in
peacemaking as Ifi Amadiume stated and as Nkiru Nzegwu echoed.
We advocate that this philosophy of anti-patriarchal, anti-racist,
anti-imperialist nonviolence should be taught systematically as part
of the programs of community policing in Africa in pursuit of the
more humane society of Angela Davis, with no racism, sexism, prisons, poverty, and no war.
Accountabilities in Community Policing
Most police formations globally are guilty of misconduct, including
human rights violations, the excessive use of force, and corruption.
Some of these have contributed to societal uprisings, like #BlackLivesMatter in the United States, in Egypt, and recently #EndSARS
in Nigeria. The youth demonstrations against the police in Nigeria
was a societal reaction against the ills in the society, but primarily
against the arbitrariness of the police’s negative actions on citizens.
There is no question that the Nigerian Police Force has completely
lost its integrity, and if the institution is going to be effective again,
the authorities will need to regain their moral authority. This will be
difficult and will need major changes in police accountability.
Conclusion | 139
The United Nation’s Handbook on Police Accountability Oversight,
and Integrity, defined accountability as “a system of internal and
external checks and balances aimed at ensuring that police perform
the functions expected of them to a high standard and are held
responsible if they fail to do so” (2011: 9). Accountable policing
means that the police accept being questioned about their decisions
and actions and accept the consequences of being found guilty of
misconduct.
According to the handbook, effective police accountability
requires:
1. A system in which police, the state, the public/community, and
independent bodies are represented.
2. A system involving monitoring before, during, and after police
operations and actions.
3. A system allowing for corrective action.
4. A system that targets individual police officers, the supervisors, and the institutions as a whole.
Elements of an effective police accountability system includes:
• Legislation in line with international human rights law specifying the functions and powers of the police.
• Opportunities for the public to voice their concerns.
• Adequate police training, both basic and ongoing.
• Proper reporting procedures and facilities.
• Adequate supervision that supports officers in carrying out
their duties professionally and reporting these correctly.
• A working culture that promotes transparency and evaluation.
• Procedures for overseeing the feedback, evaluation, and complaints (United Nations, 2011: 7).
140 | Conclusion
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About the Authors
Ifi Amadiume is a poet, anthropologist, and essayist. Formerly a
professor of religion at Dartmouth College, she is the author of Male
Daughters, Female Husbands among other works.
Kimani Nehusi is an associate professor in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University. A multidisciplinary scholar with special interests in language and
linguistics, history, culture, and research methodology, he is the
author of A People’s Political History of Guyana, 1838-1964 among
other works.
Emmanuel C. Onyeozili earned his Ph.D. in criminology from
Florida State University and is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He has
served as the managing editor of the African Journal of Criminology
and Justice Studies since 2005, and he is a coeditor of The Routledge
Handbook of Africana Criminologies. His research interests are
social control and policing, African criminology, and politics.
Biko Agozino is a professor of sociology and Africana studies at
Virginia Tech and the editor-in-chief of African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies. He is a coeditor of Routledge Handbook
of Africana Criminologies and the author of Black Women and the
Criminal Justice System: Toward the Decolonisation of Victimisation
and Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason.
Augustine O. Agu is an international consultant in educational planning, administration, and social policy. He is a passionate education
leader with more than thirty years of educational experience teach| 157
ing, formulating, and championing educational strategies in developing countries. His career includes ten years teaching with the
University of Ibadan, Nigeria and twenty-one years with UNICEF as
chief of education for Somali, Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the
social policy advisor for Trinidad and Tobago. His areas of expertise include: program planning, educational strategy development,
school district planning, global education policy, and national policy
development. His current research interests are in the areas of boy’s
underachievement in education, poverty and the well-being of children, issues of implementation, the role of universities in promoting sustainable development, and the use of restorative practices for
school discipline.
Patrick Ibe is chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Albany
State University. His scholarship interests include criminal justice,
corrections and profiling, the protection of women against violence,
and political science. He has authored many peer-reviewed journal
articles and made presentations on criminal justice issues at numerous academic conferences, including the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Criminal
Justice Association of Georgia, where he also serves on the advisory
board. Ibe serves as a reviewer for African Journal of Criminology
and Justice Studies and as vice president of Albany Second Chance
(a nonprofit organization focusing on the societal reintegration of
ex-convicts). He holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from
Southern University in New Orleans, a master’s degree in criminal
justice from Atlanta University, and a doctorate in political science
from Clark Atlanta University.
158 | About the Authors