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Nigeria Incidence and Trends in Crime
In the 1980s, serious crime grew to nearly epidemic
proportions, particularly in Lagos and other urbanized
areas
characterized by rapid growth and change, by stark
economic
inequality and deprivation, by social disorganization, and
by
inadequate government service and law enforcement
capabilities.
Published crime statistics were probably grossly
understated,
because most of the country was virtually unpoliced--the
police
were concentrated in urban areas where only about 25
percent of
the population lived--and public distrust of the police
contributed to underreporting of crimes.
Annual crime rates fluctuated around 200 per 100,000
population until the early l960s and then steadily
increased to
more than 300 per 100,000 by the mid-1970s. Available data
from
the 1980s indicated a continuing increase. Total reported
crimes
rose from almost 211,000 in 1981 to between 330,000 and
355,000
during 1984-85. Although serious crime usually constituted
the
larger category, minor crimes and offenses accounted for
most of
the increase. Crimes against property generally accounted
for
more than half the offenses, with thefts, burglary, and
breaking
and entering covering 80 to 90 percent in most years.
Assaults
constituted 70 to 75 percent of all offenses against
persons. The
British High Commission in Lagos cited more than 3,000
cases of
forgeries annually.
In the late 1980s, the crime wave was exacerbated by
worsening economic conditions and by the ineffectiveness,
inefficiency, and corruption of police, military, and
customs
personnel who colluded and conspired with criminals or
actually
engaged in criminal conduct. In 1987 the minister of
internal
affairs dismissed the director and 23 other senior
officials of
the customs service and "retired" about 250 other customs
officers for connivance in or toleration of smuggling. In
October
1988, Babangida threatened to execute publicly any police
or
military personnel caught selling guns to criminals.
Indeed, one
criminologist argued that the combination of
discriminatory law
enforcement and official corruption served to manage
rather than
reduce crime, by selectively punishing petty offenders
while
failing to prosecute vigorously major criminals and those
guilty
of white collar crime.
The public response to official misconduct was to take
matters into its own hands. In July 1987, butchers,
traders, and
unemployed persons in Minna vented their wrath over police
harassment, intimidation, and extortion in a six-hour
rampage
against police and soldiers that was quelled by military
units.
In November 1989, when a police team raided suspect stores
in
Katsina market, the merchants feared it was a police
robbery and
sounded the alarm, attracting a mob that was then
dispersed by
riot police. As loss of confidence in law enforcement
agencies
and public insecurity increased, so also did public resort
to
vigilante action. Onitsha vigilantes killed several
suspected
criminals in 1979. In July 1989, after a gang of about
thirty
armed men terrorized and looted a neighborhood in Onitsha
without
police intervention, residents vented their rage on known
and
suspected criminals and lynched four before riot police
eventually restored order.
Drug-related crime emerged as a major problem in the
1980s.
At least 328 cocaine seizures were made between 1986 and
1989,
and the number of hard drug convictions surged from 8 in
1986 to
149 in 1989, with women accounting for 27 percent of the
275
total convictions during this period. Drug-induced
psychoses
accounted for 15 percent of admissions to four psychiatric
hospitals in l988. In a related development, the federal
Ministry
of Health reported in 1989 that about one-half of the
drugs
available in Nigeria were imitations, leading to a series
of
counterfeit and fake drugs decrees imposing increasingly
higher
penalties for violations.
Nigerians also participated heavily in international
drug
trafficking. One study found that 65 percent of the heroin
seizures of 50 grams or more in British airports came from
Nigeria, which was the transit point for 20 percent of all
heroin
from Southwest Asia. Another study disclosed that 20
percent of
the hard drug cases in Britain involved ships of the
Nigerian
National Shipping Line. By the late 1980s, Nigerians were
arrested almost daily in foreign countries, and hundreds
languished in foreign jails for drug trafficking.
Data as of June 1991
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