Community Partnership in Policing: The Nigerian Experience

The cooperation of members of the community with the police is vital for the success of any police organisation. The Nigerian experience is, however, peculiar in the sense that there is no love lost between the police and most community members, given the history of the Nigerian police. Moreover, in the face of police inability to stem surging crime waves, the people of Nigeria are turning from formal law enforcement agencies to informal ethnic militia groups for protection. But the relationship between the police and these ethnic militia groups is often anything but cordial and this is often to the detriment of the people to whom the police owe a duty of protection. This paper traces the history of policing in Nigeria across three epochs: pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial, while making suggestions for effective partnership between the police and community members and highlighting some of the mistakes of the colonial era.