The surge of vigilantism in Nigeria owes to several factors. The foremost of these are rising insecurity, the failures of the Nigeria Police Force and other official security agencies to curb crime, the justice system’s deficiencies and the diminution of citizen trust in the federal government to protect all ethnic groups equally and impartially. Last but not least is high youth unemployment.

Nigeria has experienced an unprecedented rise in violence over the past decade. The Boko Haram insurgency in the North East has killed about 350,000 people (directly or indirectly) and displaced over three million; herder-farmer clashes, sometimes aggravated by long-running ethno-religious grievances, have become more frequent in the North Central zone and some southern states.  In the North West, criminal gangs wreak havoc in rural towns and menace major highways, while Biafra secessionists roil the South East.  Further south in the Niger Delta, piracy and cult violence are commonplace.  Some types of violent crime have spread nationwide. Kidnapping for ransom, once limited to the Niger Delta, has spiralled throughout the country, with a 169 per cent increase from 2019 to 2020.  Illicit firearms are readily available, with at least six million guns in the hands of various non-state actors.  The total death toll of insurgency, herder-farmer conflict, ethno-religious violence and violent crime, tracked by several organisations, has climbed from 3,188 in 2019 to at least 4,556 in 2020 and 5,067 in 2021.

In parallel to rising crime rates, the capacity and effectiveness of the Nigeria Police Force, the federal institution constitutionally mandated to protect citizens countrywide, is in woeful decline.  The deterioration dates back to the years of military rule but has become increasingly pronounced in the last decade, in the view of serving and retired police officers who spoke to Crisis Group (as well as many other local observers). It is the product of several factors.

First, the country’s policing framework, in which the federal government in Abuja calls all the main shots, is flawed. State governors, who are publicly presumed to be the chief security officers in their respective territories (based on their constitutional designation as state chief executives), have no legal power to order police units to respond to major security incidents. State police chiefs also often have to obtain approval from the federal inspector general of police before deploying personnel. This centralised structure often inhibits the police from intervening promptly when the public is in peril.

Secondly, the police are grossly underfunded and undermanned. Annual appropriations fall far short of the force’s projected needs, leaving units critically lacking in all respects, including kitting of personnel, transport, logistics and communication assets.  These deficits severely undercut their effectiveness in protecting citizens.

The force’s strength of roughly 300,000 personnel for a population of over 200 million amounts to about one police officer to 667 citizens, a poor ratio by regional standards.  About half of this force are bodyguards for senior government officials and other elites in cities, compounding the deficit.  Furthermore, with many training institutions ill-equipped (if not dilapidated) and unable to provide meaningful training, most personnel are poorly prepared for their work, resulting in a low level of professionalism.  Remuneration, accommodations and overall conditions of service are miserable, sapping morale.  Lamenting the impact of these conditions on police performance, a former police commissioner, Olayinka Balogun, said: “It is futile, unproductive and wishful thinking to expect good service from a neglected, technologically and numerically handicapped and frustrated police force”.

Largely due to the deficits highlighted above, reports of corruption and human rights abuses by police are widespread.  In October 2020, for instance, reports that police killed a young man in Delta state triggered large protests against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, seen as the most repressive unit.  Yet abuses continue even after the government disbanded the squad to address protesters’ concerns.  The combination of years of ineffectiveness, with alleged corruption and human rights abuses, has eroded public confidence in the police and helped drive many to resort to self-help.

Many regional authorities echo the sense that federal agencies are not doing enough to protect citizens. In Niger state, which is plagued by heavily armed bandits, the secretary of the state government, Ibrahim Matane, said at a press briefing: “If you see Nigeria today, every state is on its own. You must pursue your agenda to survive. If support comes, fine; if it doesn’t, you are on your own”.  In some states, like Katsina and Zamfara, governors have publicly encouraged citizens to rely on themselves rather than on the police. Two governors – Darius Ishaku of Taraba state and Samuel Ortom of Benue state – went even further, saying all citizens should be allowed to buy firearms. These calls underscore the loss of faith in federal capacity to ensure public safety.

The policing deficit is compounded by the justice system’s failures.  In the face of so much violent crime, the justice system is often unable to sanction perpetrators and give victims redress. There are too few courts and judges. For instance, in December 2021 the chief judge of the Federal High Court, John Tsoho, said the court, with 75 judges, had over 128,000 cases in dockets across its divisions nationwide, meaning that on average each judge had over 1,700 cases to handle.

Judicial proceedings are slow and expensive, and legal help is largely unavailable to the poor. On one hand, many accused persons suffer lengthy pre-trial detention in congested prisons, with some held without bail for decades due to insufficient legal representation at the time of arrest and poor recordkeeping by courts and prisons. More than two thirds of detainees are awaiting trial – nearly twice the African average and three times the rate in Europe.  On the other hand, some people who committed crimes are poorly prosecuted and eventually let go, causing great distress among victims. For these reasons, many citizens distrust the courts and are inclined to place their trust in vigilantes not only to protect them, but also to apprehend criminals and administer prompt penalties.

Another factor in some parts of the country is that residents doubt the federal government’s commitment to protect all ethnic and religious groups even-handedly. Since he was first elected in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed security chiefs mostly from the majority-Muslim states in the north, leading some southerners to charge that the government is unrepresentative of, and therefore insensitive to, their interests.  For their part, farmers in the North Central zone (Middle Belt), who are of diverse ethnicities, are upset with the government’s lethargic initial response to the deadly assaults they have suffered from herder-allied armed groups that are predominantly Fulani.  In both instances, the perception is that the president, himself a Muslim from Katsina state, is partial to his Fulani kin and co-religionists from the north.

Such distrust of the government is deepened by misgivings among some groups about the neutrality of federal security forces. Some leaders in the North Central zone and southern states go so far as to allege that troops are complicit in communal violence. Notably, in 2018 Theophilus Danjuma, a former army chief (1976-1979) and defence minister (1999-2003), said “the armed forces are not neutral” in the conflict between Fulani herders and farmers; he called on other ethnic groups to organise in self-defense.

Even in Buhari’s home zone (the North West), there is growing disillusionment with security forces that are seen as inadequately responsive to security challenges. In March 2022, Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, charged that security agencies “have enough intelligence” to move against the armed groups wreaking havoc in his state, but that “the problem is for the agencies to take action”.  The inadequate response may owe more to under-resourcing and overstretch than to partiality or deliberate inaction. But in any case, trust in the federal security forces continues to erode.

Against this backdrop, various groups feel under significant and even existential threat, and turn to vigilantes for protection. In parts of the north, pastoralists feel embattled by shrinking grazing land, disappearing water, growing cattle rustling and deepening hostility among farmers and their patrons in government. Anti-grazing laws enacted by Benue state (North Central) and most southern states sharpen this perception. Across the North Central zone and southern states, farmers are alarmed by the increasing southward migration of herders and job-seeking youth from the far north, the related rises in herder-farmer violence and banditry, and Fulani involvement in crime, especially kidnapping for ransom.  Farmers view these trends as part of a long-term plan to overrun agrarian regions. The sense of siege among pastoralists and farmers alike has prompted both to organise for communal defence.

A further driving factor in the growth of vigilantism is the high level of youth unemployment across the country. Among Nigerians aged 15-34, the joblessness rate, which had stayed below 10 per cent each year in the early 2010s, rose to 12.48 percent in 2016 and ballooned thereafter, reaching 42.5 percent in the last quarter of 2020.  In many states, governments admit they established vigilante groups not only to boost security, but also to create jobs. Youths who join the state-sponsored vigilantes that are better funded can earn monthly stipends. Some hope that the paramilitary skills they acquire may qualify them for permanent positions with the police or the military. For many, vigilantism is also an avenue through which to gain recognition and respect among their kin and peers.

Conclusion

The rise of insecurity across Nigeria in recent years has compelled desperate responses from many states, ethnic groups and communities, spawning a new generation of vigilante organisations alongside those that have long existed. For now, any attempt to rein in these organisations will be futile: they are too valuable in fighting crime and maintaining public safety in places where the police cannot do either. Yet the widespread resort to vigilantism is an improvisation that cannot be a permanent solution and that poses immediate risks to intercommunal relations, human rights and national security. Over the short and medium term, federal and state authorities should work to better regulate, support and shape the activities of these groups. Over the longer term, federal and state governments must focus on improving the police service through comprehensive reform and devolution of policing to the state and community levels. The goal should be to reverse the proliferation of vigilante groups and reach a point where those of their members who have the requisite qualifications can be absorbed into official security forces while others are demobilised and, where appropriate, helped to pursue other livelihoods.

( Excerpted from ICG Report, Apr 21, 2022)