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AN APPRAISAL OF POLICE COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND CRIME REDUCTION IN LAGOS STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

The police-community relations are generally considered to be one of the most important variables that determine the efficiency of any crime-reducing strategy. In modern policing studies, scholars and policymakers agree that the police cannot successfully combat crime alone and it is the willing and mutual participation of the community that is needed (Okpa and Tyover, 2024; Alemika and Chukwuma, 2024). This is a truism that is more so in the Nigerian context, where the historical and structural affair between the police and the citizenry has been one of ingrained suspicion, suspicion towards each other, as well as institutional ineffectiveness.

Lagos State enjoys the privilege of place in any discourse of policing and crime in Nigeria. Lagos being the most populated city in Africa, estimated as about 20 million people, is also the business and economic centre in the nation as well as the refuge of the busiest seaport in West Africa (Badiora, 2024). However, according to every possible measure, Lagos is also the most crime-prone state in Nigeria (Statista, 2024). The Nigeria Police Force showed in 2022 that at least 345 individuals have been killed in Lagos in the previous year, the largest number in recent years, and young men and women aged between 13 and 40 are the biggest perpetrators of violent crime (Badiora, 2024). The spread of drugs, guns, the emergence of street gangs called locally area boys, and the increased youth unemployment in the megalopolis has resulted in what researchers call a deadly security cocktail in the megalopolis (Badiora, 2024).

Nigeria Police Force (NPF) was formed as a colonial institution, which was mainly created to enforce the colonial laws and safeguard the colonial economic interests instead of meeting the security requirements of the Nigerian people (Alemika, 2024; Akinyetun, 2022). This historical lack has created the dark cloud of legitimacy of the police on the minds of the Nigerians. Alemika (2024) concludes that the legacy of colonialism of the NPF still affects policing in contemporary Nigeria and creates an institution that is viewed by many Nigerians as the one serving the interests of the elites, enforcing them, and mostly being unconcerned with the well-being of the average citizen. The study of Ayodele and Aderinto (2014) within the Lagos State environment in particular reported that the trust people had in police was very low, which directly influenced the readiness to report a crime to the police, which had since been reaffirmed by other studies many times.

It would be the case that the crisis of policecommunity relations in Nigeria came to an inflection point in October 2020 with the #EndSARS demonstrations reaching an international level of visibility. The movement that started as a protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) a notorious police unit that was established in 1992 soon expanded into a nationwide movement that was triggered by decades of repressed complaints about police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and corruption within the system (Akinyetun, 2021; Oluwaseun and Ojo, 2023). Described as a catastrophic down turning point in the state-citizen relationship, the Lekki tollgate incident, when the Nigerian military shot at peaceful protesters in Lagos on 20‛ October 2020, now known as “Black Tuesday”, became the most dramatic moment of disregard towards the law-enforcement agencies (Akinyetun, 2022; Iwuoha and Aniche, 2021). Empirical evidence presented by Afrobarometer (2023) has validated the fact that the trust in the Nigerian police has dwindled drastically since the year 2000 to 2022 and this is a clear indication of loss of institutional legitimacy.

The consequence of the #EndSARS has sparked academic interest in what other scholars have termed a trap of institutional distrust that is a self-cutting edge wherein high levels of public mistrust of the police will lead to poor crime reporting, investigations, and community use of extrajudicial crime-controlling measures such as mob justice and vigilantism (Tandfonline, 2024). This dynamic translates into crime reduction in Lagos. In the event of noncompliance by communities with the police, they cannot share the important intelligence information they possess, and the police are left without the information resources needed to conduct and prevent crime when the communities are not cooperative (Nwankwo, 2023; Adeyemi and Ojo, 2023).

It is in this context that community policing has become a possible solution to scholars and policy makers. In its broad definition, community policing is a philosophy that reinforces organisational approaches that propel the proactive utilisation of partnerships and problem-solving methods that respond to the immediate circumstances that bring about problems of public-safety like crime, social disorder and fear of crime (Friedman, 1992; Okpa & Tyover, 2024). There is an increasing agreement in the literature about community policing in Nigeria that police-community alliances, community crime-prevention approaches, and collaborative problem-solving are positively linked to crime-reduction results (Okpa and Tyover, 2024; Ndu Chukwuebuka Fabian, 2021). Nevertheless, in Lagos and other Nigerian settings, empirical evidence also demonstrates that such strategies are hampered by insurmountable structural and attitudinal setbacks that can be attributed to the historical nature of the Nigerian policing service (Akinyetun, 2022; Ndu Chukwuebuka Fabian, 2021).

Empirical evidence on these dynamics has been conducted on particular Lagos communities with studies. A study on the community policing within one of the Lagos State Government Areas by Ndu Chukwuebuka Fabian (2021) revealed that although the community members indicated their readiness to interact with the police, their readiness to do so due to the reliability, fairness, and professionalism of the NPF was also highly doubted. The same study by Akazue and Akinlatan (2021) revealed that in the Ikeja region of the Lagos State, insecurity was predominantly caused by the inability to transform significant community policing models, which demanded the redefinition of the police-community relationship in the state. Ofole and Odetala (2011) had previously evaluated community policing in the Ibeju-Lekki Local Government Area of Lagos and reported the low success of the efforts put in place to mitigate crime and attributed this to structural gaps between the police organization and the communities it claims to serve.

It is difficult to underestimate the role of trust in the relationship between the police and community. Tyler (2022) explains that the readiness of people to cooperate with law enforcement and comply with the statutory requirements depends not more on the perceived severity of punishment but rather on the opinions about the police legitimacy and justice. Procedural justice, which refers to the perceived fairness of the police processes, becomes a key mediating variable between police and community relations and crime reduction outcomes. In places with poor trust, people are less likely to report crime, provide witness testifications or participate in safety-related community programs that are all irreplaceable to effective crime control (Bradford, Aaron, 2023; Usman, 2023).

The academic sources also highlight the role of socioeconomic determinants in influencing the structure of police-community relations and crime trends in Lagos. Badiora (2024) reports that the aspects of young unemployment, the spread of illegal drugs and weapons, and a high level of inequality in cities are the main contributors to violent crime in the city. Not only do these structural conditions breed criminality but they also undermine attempts of community policing by creating constituencies of alienated youth who are out of sync to the police and the formal economic existence. As noted by Adeyemi and Ojo (2023), in communities with a high level of socioeconomic marginalisation, the intensity of public-police distrust reaches its peak, which causes a twofold vulnerability of placing the community at risk of high crime rates on the one hand, and providing the least effective policing on the other hand.

The Nigerian government has recognized the limitations of the federal police model regionwide and has encouraged the building of state-level security structures. The Amotekun security corps has become a complementary community security agency in the South-Western geopolitical zone, such as Lagos, and it is involved in crime prevention in Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Ekiti states (Nwoko, as cited in Tandfonline, 2025). However, interaction between these state-level security programs and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and their overall effect on crime reduction has not been sufficiently researched in the scholarly literature with regard to the Lagos State in particular.

The current study can be placed in this complex network of historical, institutional, sociocultural, and structural processes. A review of policecommunity relations and crime reduction in Lagos State is not just the business of an academic undertaking; but a policy-relevant study, whose direct ramifications are the security, wellbeing, and development of millions of inhabitants in the most consequential metropolis in Nigeria.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Even after decades of policy pronouncements, reforms, and academic activism in favor of community policing in Nigeria, the crime rates in the Lagos State are disastrously high. Murder rate in Lagos was the highest in years and armed robbery, drug trafficking, and gang violence are continuous in the city (Badiora, 2024; Statista, 2024). The continued high levels of this type of crime, even with the official introduction of community policing systems to the Nigeria Police Force, suggest that there is a fundamental mismatch between policy and practice.

One of the main problems is that the relations between the police and the communities in Lagos state are highly fragmented. The NPF was exposed dramatically when the public trust in the NPF went down as a result of the #EndSARS protests of 2020, especially in Lagos (Akinyetun, 2022; Oluwaseun and Ojo, 2023). According to Bello (2023), police legitimacy in Nigeria is deemed as seriously low and the citizens consider the institution as individuals who are self-serving, corrupt, and brutal instead of protecting the people. Nwankwo (2023) specifically mentions the Lagos State as the critical case study where the community policing and public trust have broken down. In cases where communities are distrustful of the police, intelligence flows, willingness to cooperate with the police, and civic engagement that serve as the foundation of effective crime reduction are devastated (Adeyemi and Ojo,�edible, 2023; Tyler, 2022).

The gaps in the literature, though being increased, also exist. The majority of the literature on community policing in Nigeria dwells on the Federal Capital Territory or other states, and few studies have done a comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of police-community relations and their particular crime reduction impacts in the context of the Lagos State (Akinlotan and Akazue, 2021; Ndu Chukwuebuka Fabian, 2021). Moreover, a lot of the existing research was conducted prior to the events of the #EndSARS protests and thus, they do not consider the major change in the police communal environment that took place in 2020 and the consequences thereof. Few systematic scholarly studies have been conducted on the socioeconomic aspects of crime and policecommunity relationships in Lagos with youth unemployment, drug proliferation and inequality being the main factors in regard to the impact they have on the community policing outcomes.

Therefore, the proposed research will attempt to address these gaps by critically evaluating the nature, quality, and the results of police-community relations in Lagos State with focus on their implications on crime reduction.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The general objective of this study is to appraise police-community relations and their impact on crime reduction in Lagos State. Specifically, the study aims to:

1. Examine the nature and quality of the relationship between the police and communities in Lagos State.

2. Assess the extent to which existing community policing initiatives in Lagos State have contributed to crime reduction.

3. Identify the structural, institutional, and attitudinal factors that constrain effective police-community relations and crime reduction in Lagos State.

4. Evaluate the impact of the #EndSARS crisis on police-community trust and cooperation in Lagos State.

5. Propose evidence-based recommendations for strengthening police-community relations and improving crime reduction outcomes in Lagos State.

1.4 Research Questions

The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. What is the nature and quality of police-community relations in Lagos State?

2. To what extent have community policing initiatives contributed to crime reduction in Lagos State?

3. What structural, institutional, and attitudinal factors constrain effective police-community relations and crime reduction in Lagos State?

4. What has been the impact of the #EndSARS protests on police-community trust and cooperation in Lagos State?

5. What policy measures can be adopted to improve police-community relations and crime reduction in Lagos State?

1.5 Significance of the Study

This study is of considerable academic, policy, and practical significance. Academically, it contributes to the growing body of scholarship on community policing and crime control in the West African context, addressing specific empirical gaps relating to Lagos State in the post-#EndSARS period. It engages with theoretical frameworks including procedural justice theory (Tyler, 2022), institutional trust theory (Schilke, Reimann & Cook, 2021), and community policing theory (Friedman, 1992; Okpa & Tyover, 2024) to illuminate the complex dynamics of police-community relations in a megacity context. From a policy perspective, the findings of this study will be of value to the Lagos State Government, the Nigeria Police Force, the Ministry of Police Affairs, and other stakeholders in the security sector. Nigeria’s ongoing police reform agenda — which was reinvigorated by the #EndSARS protests — requires rigorous empirical grounding, and this study contributes to that evidence base. The study also speaks to the interests of civil society organisations, community associations, and international development partners engaged in security sector reform in Nigeria. At the practical level, the study’s recommendations provide actionable insights for police commanders, local government administrators, and community leaders seeking to rebuild trust, enhance cooperation, and ultimately reduce crime in Lagos State’s diverse and complex communities.

1.6 Scope of the Study

This study is geographically focused on Lagos State, Nigeria, with particular attention to selected Local Government Areas that have been identified in the literature as high-crime communities with significant community policing activity and history. The study covers the period from 2015 to 2024, which encompasses both the pre- and post-#EndSARS periods, allowing for an analysis of how the protests affected police-community relations and their crime reduction implications. The study is thematically scoped to examine police-community relations, community policing initiatives, public trust, crime patterns, and crime reduction outcomes.

1.7 Operational Definition of Terms

Police-Community Relations: The patterns of interaction, communication, and cooperation between officers of the Nigeria Police Force and the members of communities.

Community Policing: A policing philosophy and operational strategy that emphasises organisational partnership with communities, problem-solving approaches to crime prevention, and decentralisation of police authority to foster proactive public safety outcomes.

Crime Reduction: A measurable decrease in the incidence, frequency, or severity of criminal activity within a defined geographical area over a specified period of time, achieved through the combined efforts of law enforcement agencies, community stakeholders, and government institutions.

Legitimacy: The belief among members of the public that the police have the right to exercise authority and that their decisions and actions are appropriate and fair, thereby generating voluntary compliance with the law.

Public Trust: The degree of confidence that members of the public have in the willingness and ability of the police to act in the best interests of the community, enforce the law fairly, and provide effective protection.

References

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Akinyetun, T. S. (2021). Reign of terror: A review of police brutality on Nigerian youth by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). African Security Review, 30(3), 368 385.

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Akinlotan, R. A., & Akazue, G. D. (2021). Insecurity: Rethinking community policing and crime management in Ikeja Area of Lagos State. International Journal of Management, Social Sciences, Peace and Conflict Studies (IJMSSPCS), 4(4).

Alemika, E. O. (2024). Colonial legacy and contemporary policing in Nigeria: A historical analysis. University of Lagos Press.

Alemika, E. O., & Chukwuma, I. (2024). Public trust and policing in Nigeria: Implications for crime control. University of Jos Press.

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