Insecurity: Citizens Centred Security Architecture, Answer To Failing Public Order Policing, By Prince Tosin

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Broadly speaking, the term citizen security encompasses a movement away from security debates whose primary concern was threats to the state or regime toward a concern with threats to public, social and political order posed by rising common crime and public fear of crime. 

When citizens feel secure and the rule of law is respected, communities are able to prosper. Individuals start businesses, plan for the future and create thriving families, institutions and states. Communities threatened by epidemic levels of violence, extremism and transnational crime, instability hinders growth and development. Vulnerable youth growing up in these at-risk communities and volatile environments often encounter difficult choices—gangs or extremists groups may seem like viable alternatives to a life of voiceless alienation and social exclusion. 

Across Nigeria, fear of crime and perceptions of increasing social disorder are widespread. Anxiety about personal safety is crossing boundaries, class and ideology. Failure of the state’s public order and criminal justice institutions to respond adequately and provide basic security needs is glaringly apparent. Obviously, strict public order policing has failed to address the rising insecurity in our Nation, hence the need to take a critical look at reengineering our security architecture to be more citizens centric. 

During the British rule that lasted between 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial masters need for influence supported the development of public order policies and institutions designed to protect regimes rather than their citizens. The colonial regime was prone to police and military abusing of human rights with impunity.  Subsequent administrations from independent enjoyed the public order policies that is aimed at protecting few political elites and government infrastructure.

No wonder hundreds of policemen are posted to secure government houses while communities do not have police post, men or fire power. This over the years distorted the skills and practices of the police force and criminal justice system, leaving institutions with little aptitude for fighting crime in a manner that respects human rights principles. Our Police and judicial processes remain abusive, corrupt and ineffective.

This continued abuse under democratic governments, and the failure of the State to provide large social sectors with basic protections and services are a central facet of the phenomenon described as “uncivil democracy.” Regime Policing inherited from the colonial masters was politically acceptable for governments after independence as long as crime remains primarily confined to the poor. Now that crime has increased, affecting middle and upper classes, the ineffectiveness of public order and criminal justice policies is receiving due attention from our political elites.

 There is an urgent need for government to address present public outcry starting with a renew examination of public order institutions and policies. Over the years, government response to police weakness has been to re-engage the military in internal security and public order tasks, thereby undermining restrictions on military mandates that limit them to external defence tasks. Today in Nigeria, crime rates appear to be increasing despite policing tactics that face little or no legal restrictions and operate under extremely weak accountability mechanisms.

While it appears that some targeted anti-crime efforts can be effective, in other cases these measures tend to escalate rather than reduce violence. Criminal cases cannot advance without some level of public cooperation. Police detect few crimes without public complaints and, when they cannot obtain public assistance with their investigations, they most likely fall back on repressive methods such as the torture of suspects to extract confessions.

Record of present style of authoritarian policing that built up social control and repressive functions at the expense of criminal investigation and crime prevention has generated the existing high levels of public mistrust.  Our nation is currently grabbing with real danger of a vicious ‘security perception circle’ in which a failure to act against crime reinforces public believes that government is weak, while overreaction with repressive policing measures leaves the impression that little has changed.

 Both the impact of crime and social violence, and the impact of the various private and governmental responses to crime pose a major threat to the rule of law and democratic consolidation in countries with weak democratic cultures and histories of human rights abuse like ours. Political leadership in Nigeria should take note that when crime and social violence start to disrupt social order, democratic political order may too easily become the next victim. 

 In environments of extreme public anxiety about crime, repressive “war on crime” measures are frequently popular, even when they undermine basic legal guarantees. In the face of governments’ inability to stem crime, private responses in the form of booming private security businesses and vigilantism by those who can afford to purchase security are increasingly demanded. 

What happens to rights of citizens, and their right to the state’s protection, when confronted by prevalent private violence? How do we incorporate popular concerns with crime and insecurity into the human rights discourse and, in turn, incorporate the human rights discourse into anti-crime policy? A principal challenge for the Nigerians security community in coming months is to develop an answer to this question.

Tosin Jegede writes from Akure, Ondo State via telewestauto@gmail.com

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