Documented evidences of endemic police corruption and its devastating effects on the rule of law in Nigeria abounds. Overtime, policing in the country has developed and changed, but corruption within its system has continued virtually unabated and largely unchanged in form and format. Rather, it has merely adjusted and adapted to developments in the Nigerian society. However, in spite of the growing rate of corrupt practices perpetrated by the police on daily basis, empirical interests on this s ...

In Nigeria, issues that bother on policing and human rights often evoke contentious debate. The Nigeria Police, being the key law enforcement agency in the country has had to contend with accusations of human rights violations which is proof that it is are facing serious challenges in its attempt to balance rights protection with national security, and public order. Specifically, proponents of macro-sociological perspectives tend to assume that it is the external influence of the elite class whi ...

The study investigated the influence of occupational stress and mental health on Nigeria Police Officers aggressivity. Agressivity by the police is widespread, consistent, persistent and multidimensional in Nigeria. The study is a descriptive survey research in which occupational stress and mental health were the independent variables and police aggressivity as the dependent variable. The participants responded to three valid and standardized instruments which were: The Aggression Questionnaire ...

Scholarly works on crime and policing are yet to accord much attention to the phenomenon of juju practice and criminality. Indeed, while accounts of survivors of juju-oaths and juju-using criminals have been considerably documented, limited empirical studies have attempted to examine the awareness, beliefs, perception and experiences of law enforcement officers in their dealings with criminals that deploy the use of juju for protection against apprehension. Therefore, an exploratory approach was ...

This research investigates the deployment of juju rituals by criminals to perpetrate crime, ensure invincibility, avoid injury or death, subdue victims, and evade police apprehension. Existing studies have predominantly focused on the use of juju in relation to human and sex trafficking; however, this current study takes a more generalized approach to examine usage across Nigerian-organized crime. It explores perceived potency and exploits of juju-using criminals, police personnel’s encounters a ...

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Nigeria police was entrusted with the responsibility of coordinating local shutdowns, encouraging social distancing, enforcing stay-at-home mandates, and supervising compulsory wearing of face masks. Drawing from procedural justice theory, this study explored accounts of unlawful use of force, human rights violations, and other police misconducts that resulted from the enforcement of COVID-19 measures. Using a victim-centred approach involving qua ...

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the many intersections between policing and public health, illuminating profound effects of the interactions and collaborative efforts between both sectors in Nigeria, which culminated into an industrial action by health workers in protest of police harassment and extortion. This study, which represents one of the first attempts at empirically examining inter-sectoral collaboration between police and healthcare personnel in the promotion of public health, explor ...

In the wake of pandemic policing occasioned by COVID-19, Nigeria police have been facing challenges of a lack of legitimacy, together with what is termed the militarization of police operations. This has impacted considerably on police–community relations. Meanwhile, early reports on the police response to the pandemic indicated high levels of lockdown violation, despite adoption of a militarized option in the enforcement of restriction orders. In reviewing one of the first police interventions ...

The global calls for the decriminalisation of suicide have been intense, leading to several countries repealing laws against suicide and suicidal behaviour. However, this opened up a gap in knowledge on suicide policing in countries that maintained statutes penalising suicide. Drawing from the case of Nigeria, one of the countries where attempted suicide attracts prison sentences, this study explored the opinions and experiences of police officers as regards the criminalisation of suicide and en ...

Globally, questions have been asked on how police utilized additional powers created to manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus without negatively impacting police legitimacy. This was particularly a concern in countries that had hitherto recorded high incidents of police misconduct prior to the emergence of the pandemic. Using a victim-centered approach, a qualitative study was conducted to examine the dimensions of unlawful use of force, human rights violations, and other police misconduct whi ...

The article explores the lived experiences of investigative police officers in managing rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) in Nigeria, a developing country with a conservative patriarchal system and deep-rooted rape culture. A qualitative study involving 24 sexual crime investigating police officers of six states’ police commands in southwest Nigeria was conducted, and a thematic analysis of the narratives was carried out. Findings indicated police efforts at addressing RASSO are constrain ...