This article introduces a journal issue examining: 1) how contemporary vigilantism in Nigeria has been at the forefront of contests over state authority; and 2) the social and cultural interpretation of vigilantism. It argues that contemporary Nigerian vigilantism involves a range of local and global dynamics beyond informal justice. Nigerian vigilante organisations do not merely reflect globalisation and the rise of the private security sector; they are not fully explained as a response to crime and a vacuum left by the state; and they cannot be neatly understood as forerunners of popular movements to reassert autonomy against state power. Rather, vigilantism is historically contingent and culturally specific, having various localised practices and meanings. The study of vigilantism could usefully focus on links between sociality and security; people’s investment in social relationship and practices (burials, meals, marriages) are also investments in forms of insurance and protection.
Historically in Nigeria, night guards and vigilante groups have often emerged in response to theft and armed robbery. Since the return to democracy in 1999, however, vigilante groups have proliferated. They have organised at many levels (from lineage to ethnic group), in many locations (from village ward to city street), and for many reasons (from crime fighting to political lobbying). Crime fighting has been led in the Yoruba-speaking south-west by the O’odua People’s Congress (OPC); in the eastern states by the Bakassi Boys; and across the north by shari’a implementation committees (hisba). Beyond fighting crime, these groups spearhead contemporary political contests between the politics of identity and citizenship, and represent divergent aspirations for Nigeria’s future, including a pro-shari’a movement in the north and ethnic nationalism in the west.
Nigerian vigilante movements have an ambiguous relationship with the state. While they sometimes (in their state-sponsored guise) defend against insurgency, they are also actively part of insurgent processes.
- Most vigilante groups invoke notions of themselves as the protectors of a ‘moral community’.
- Vigilantism forms part of a quest for modes of citizenship beyond that of the nation – religious or ethnic forms of belonging, for example.
- Vigilante work is a resource for poor, unemployed youth, and a means by which the marginalised may insert themselves within the state apparatus.
- Claims of extrajudicial executions and torture carried out by vigilante groups have led to attempts at prohibition by the federal government, and ongoing contests with local authorities over the right to judge and punish crimes.
- The institutionalisation of shari’a implementation and state co-option of the Bakassi Boys were both introduced by state governors, part of a range of tactics by which governors have exploited the room for manoeuvre that now exists between state and federation.
How do trajectories of social mobilisation shape contemporary vigilantism, and how do local cultural repertoires help us understand the imperative to protect and punish? Vigilantism is influenced by localised conceptions of the ethnic, religious or criminal ‘other’, and related discourses of risk, fear, protection and punishment.
- Contemporary Nigerian vigilantism represents the articulation of claims to a set of rights based on the historical and spiritual legitimacy of young powerful men defending the community under local religious injunction and protection. The development of hisba committees in northern states, for example, draws on a religious idiom of legitimacy and discipline.
- Various moral communities produce differing notions of justice and law. For example, the armed robber is conceived in Annang society in similar ways to familiar representations of malevolent, non-human ancestral spirits. It is also reported that individuals labelled ‘armed robbers’ are often automatically presumed guilty by the police.
- Vigilantes protect not only their communities but also themselves, drawing on cultural repertoires of personal protection – of charms, shape-shifting and secrecy.
The other articles in this issue make the following key points:
- Fourchard notes that in Nigeria ‘vigilante’ is a term initially proposed by the police in the mid-1980s as a substitute for an older practice known as the ‘hunter guard’ or ‘night guard’ system. Non-state policing is thus not a new phenomena, but a first attempt to introduce community policing in order to improve the image of the police.
- Last argues that in northern Nigeria there is a pervasive anxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual. This seeks to recreate a stronger sense of the ‘core North’ as dar al-Islam, with notionally ‘closed’ boundaries, and has led to the formation of hisba (wrongly called ‘vigilantes’).
- Pratten argues that vigilantism in post-colonial Nigeria derives local legitimacy from narratives of contested rights, everyday practices, understandings of personhood and knowledge, and from alternative, older registers of governmentality.
- Nolte finds that women’s inclusion in the organisational structure of the O’odua People’s Congress (OPC) and their typical roles within it expand their political agency but contain their contributions within the OPC’s overall politics.
- Higazi finds that in Plateau state the functions of vigilantes and militias merged during the collective violence of 2002-2004. Social action and patterns of violence were shaped by power relations between identity groups and the struggle for territory.
- Adamu finds that ‘vigilantism’ has often emerged as an over-generalised, negative term, associated with violence and the violation of individual rights. However, many community policing groups exist across the shari’a states of northern Nigeria, drawing their legitimacy from different and sometimes competing sources: the Yan’banga from the Hausa traditional and communal establishment, the hisba from the religious establishment and the Yan’achaba from the political establishment.
