Policing Nigeria: Control and Autonomy in the Exercise of Coercion

Claude Ake (1982: 8, 3), in his Presidential Address to the 1982 Convention of the Nigerian Political Science Association, criticized Nigerian society, politics, and state behavior in damning terms: A predatory capitalism has bred misery, turned politics into warfare and all but arrested the development of productive forces. The Nigerian ruling class has assaulted the masses with physical and psychological violence and thwarted their aspirations, particularly their escape from underdevelopment and poverty. Legitimacy has receded to the background, making way for relations of raw power and the perception of right as being coextensive with might. Ake's views reflect a common perception that the Nigerian state survives by coercion as other means of gaining the compliance of the populace-the capacity to create a legitimating consciousness or utilitarian pay-offs-have proven ineffective, or have been wasted by a rapacious ruling class and its clients. Coercion, of course, means the police and the military. This paper focuses on the control and autonomy of coercion, concretely examined as the actions of the police, in the political economy of Nigeria. Who controls the police and how autonomous are they as an organization and as individuals? The paper argues that the state and the police are relatively autonomous from class control; that the police have interests of their own which will influence both what they do or refuse to do; and that the police are a very weak reed for the ruling class to relay upon.