Urban Crime in the Lagos Traffic: An Ethnography at the Crossroads of Multiple Codes of Ethics

This article is an ethnographic investigation into hawking, pickpocketing, and other crimes perpetrated during traffic situations in contemporary Lagos. Scholarship on street hawking in Nigeria – Lagos in particular – has overlooked certain issues associated with street hawking within Lagos traffic and has failed to counter the everyday understanding that itinerant traders are major actors in the recurring crimes that occur in traffic hold-ups. Through immersive fieldwork and based on my personal experience as a street hawker, I challenge some of these beliefs that urban crimes such as pickpocketing and armed robbery during hold-ups are predominantly perpetrated by street hawkers. I argue that street hawkers are distinguishable from the real criminals, despite police discourse and common beliefs. The criminalization of hawkers in the public mind and in administrative practices is due to categorical stereotypes unfairly produced by the government about itinerant traders during the city's feared traffic hold-ups. I show how the unfair criminalization of itinerant traders has been used to justify curbing street hawking within the traffic in Lagos.