Nigeria’s police are brutal and corrupt despite recent reform plans. Does this mean that reforms don’t raise policing standards and practices, even in a relatively democratic environment like Nigeria? This research from the University of Leeds analyses developments in the Nigerian Police since 2005. It argues that reform can change organisational structures and regulations but, without socio-political change, its effects tend to be superficial, localised and temporary. Rather than being incremental, police reforms follow a dialectical process where reform and resistance interact.
Since Nigeria’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, Nigeria’s police have received a huge amount of outside technical assistance, training and support. Yet the Nigeria Police (NP) is one of the most corrupt institutions in a society that is notorious for high levels of unpredictable violence, corruption and ethnic and religious sectarianism. Nigeria has adopted the language and organisational features of community-oriented policing and yet its police force is fundamentally the same as it was ten years ago. It remains politicised, under-resourced and inadequately trained. This suggests that the basic assumptions that underlie international police reform policies are wrong.
Most analyses of police reform suggest that democratic-style reform follows a linear progression. For example, police service commissions and community–police partnerships lead to accountable forms of policing. However, reform is an interactive process that goes through phases. Rather than a linear progression there is often one step forward followed by one step sideways or backwards.
As developments in Nigeria since 2005 make clear, a more nuanced assessment of the effects of reform is needed.
- The NP’s primary task is regime representation and regulation, rather than serving the public.
- Policing standards are whatever the strongest man says they are.
- Corruption is endemic at every level.
- President Obasanjo and Inspector-General Ehindero promoted the idea of community-based policing, even as they tolerated a style of policing that depends on bribes, graft, exploitation and intimidation.
- They promoted police – community partnerships for conflict resolution while at the same time relying on squadrons of paramilitary Mopol to crush sectarian or separatist conflict.
There is no evidence to suggest that Obasanjo or Ehindero were insincere in their reform plans. They were sincere but they also were realists who knew where the limits were. Change is balanced by continuity.
- Statements about the desirability of reform on the part of politicians and senior officers should be understood as indicating tactical adjustment to unavoidable political pressures, rather than as genuine commitment to reforms that would diminish their power.
- It is possible, although unlikely, that if the dialectic process goes through a large number of cycles, enough reform-minded people might be promoted to positions of influence to have a positive effect.
- Movement of the reform process – forward, sideways or backwards – will continue, not least because policing is contingent on political developments such as the election of a new president and the appointment of a new Inspector-General.
- Obasanjo’s blessing on the reform project meant that other influential individuals and organisations also supported it.
- The marked improvement in public attitudes to the police that the introduction of community policing in Nigeria made possible, shows that even flawed reforms have benefits.
