e-sRC

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

       Provision of adequate security is a social pre-requisite for the survival of any society. Every society takes appropriate measures to protect the lives and property of people living within its boundaries. Business and social activities may not go on freely without adequate security.¹ This fundamental essence of security may be the reason why societies from time immemorial made efforts to police their neighborhoods in order to secure them from criminal victimization. Security has to do with the act of preventing and protecting in order to ensure that certain facilities, equipment, persons or activities are safe from damage, pilferage, destruction, murder or disruption.² However, Peace, safety and security are both necessary and indispensable requirements for development and the attainment of good quality of life for any human society. They provide the requisite enabling environment for citizens to live and work towards social, economic and political development of the society.³ Furthermore, insecurity impacts negatively on all citizens through losses of property, life and limb, or through loss of confidence from fear of violence.⁴ It is against this backdrop that the delivery of safety and security is considered a justifiable public good and the very essence of the state. This study is on the impact of vigilantism on crime control in contemporary Nigeria, a case study of Edo state.

            Vigilantism is not a recent development. Before 1900, many vigilant groups were formed in frontier areas of the United States. In 1851 and 1856, concerned citizens in San Francisco organized vigilante committees that forcibly restored peace and order.⁵ In South Africa, vigilante activity is frequently justified as ‘filling a policing gap’ due to police inefficiency, corruption and conspiracy with criminals, practical failing in the criminal justice system. In Sierra-Leone, vigilante activities have been explained in terms of police ineffectiveness in combating crimes.

            In Nigeria, vigilantism existed in the pre-colonial era. Human Right Watch and Center for law enforcement and education report, noted that “vigilante and other self-defense groups currently operating in Nigeria have roots that reach deep into the country’s history. In the colonial era, some though not all independent local communities, especially in the South east maintained their own standing Army to defend their territory against the threat of invasion from neighbouring communities.⁶ Although there was no equivalent modern-day structure at that time, some parallels can be drawn between these groups which were created by local communities for their own protection, and the more recently formed self-defense groups”. This is also true in Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State where vigilantism was used as a means of both social and crime control before the advent of colonial rule. The proliferation of vigilante groups in contemporary Nigeria particularly in Lafia Local Government area of Nasarawa State is a response to crimes and criminality that have not only increased in degree, scope and volume but also have witnessed an unprecedented change in techniques, mode of operation and sophistication between 1998 and 1999 (wake of fourth republic) and the apparent failure of the Nigeria police to rise up to the occasion.⁷

          Vigilante groups and others stem from the state’s inability to provide security to its inhabitants thereby leading certain individuals into taking the law into their hands and establishing their type of security. Vigilante groups are defined as a member a group of volunteers who are not police but who decide on their own to stop crime and punish criminals without any legal authority whatsoever.⁸ This study will reflect on the role of the state in the provision of security goods to its public and the emergence of informal actors (vigilante groups).

Aims and Objectives

            This aim of the study is to examine local vigilante group and crimes control in Edo state. The study has the following as its objectives;

1. To examine the historical antecedence of local vigilante in Nigeria.
2. To examine the emergence of vigilante groups in Edo state.
3. To examine the link between state failure and the emergence of vigilante groups.
4. To examine how the vigilante groups have impacted society with reference to Edo state.
5. To examine the challenges faced by the local vigilante group curbing crime in Edo state.

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