‘We Are Proactive against the Thieves’: Community Mobilisation against COVID-19 Criminality in Ibadan,Nigeria

Introduction

To understand community response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-induced crimes, this paper interrogates how perceived vulnerability to criminal victimisation influenced community mobilisation against criminal attacks by landlords’ association in Awotan community in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State in Southwest Nigeria. Understanding community response to neighbourhood criminality is important because the enforcement of COVID-19 safety protocols altered the spatial operation of criminals and the nature of criminal victimisation. In a way, it redirected gang-related attacks that hitherto were known to occur on the streets to residential communities. In Oyo State, southwest of Nigeria, partial lockdown was imposed that allowed workers on essential services and markets. This occasioned series of robbery attacks on communities creating security panic (Primestar news, 2020). Recent studies (Akanmu et al., 2021; Okolie-Osemene, 2021) in Nigeria have documented how communities faced crime episodes during the lockdown. However, these works did not show how communities responded to this insecurity. The paper argues that perceived collective security threat can stimulate galvanisation of resources for communal patrol and vigilance oriented towards enhancing social control. Such initiative situates communities as an important social control agent in the co-creation of orderly and peaceful society.

Unlike other states in Nigeria that imposed full lockdown, Oyo State imposed partial lockdown that allowed movement of people and essential services from 6 am to 7 pm daily while using face masks and observing social distancing. Clubs and religious gatherings were prohibited and ban was placed on meetings of more than ten persons (Nigerian Tribune, 28 March 2020). ¹ Government workers were mandated to stay at home while informal economy traders selling non-food items were compelled to lock their shops. Schools were locked and the hospitality industry shut their gates. With non-food markets shut and most economic activities at low ebb, residents began to experience livelihoods strain, including criminals who now had limited opportunities to victimise on deserted streets but neighbourhoods. Government’s palliative distribution response was insufficient and the hardship occasioned by lull in business activities started to bite harder. While people obeyed the rules governing partial lockdown within the first 2 weeks, the dynamics of endurance had changed by the third week as people complained of nose-diving fortunes, hunger and other livelihood challenges (Vanguard, 2020 ² ; Akinselure, 2020). At this time, touts and criminal opportunists, and neighbourhood gangs responded with attacks on neighbourhoods and succeeded in victimising some people (Badru, 2020). It was in response to these growing attacks and victimisation with increasing fear in neighbouring communities that made other communities mobilise to defend their own spaces, including Awotan in Ido Local government area. Felson et al. (2020) argue that ‘it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the early effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on crime largely rest on routine activity theory’ (p. 7). Their study suggests that businesses around residential areas provide new opportunities for target by criminals. Alteration in routine could have differential effect on communities depending on space utilisation during the lockdown. According these authors, COVID-19 restrictions moved owners of businesses and customers from business districts to residential areas thereby leaving such locations vulnerable to criminals.

Community participation and volunteer recruitment for crime management and reduction has been identified as an important component in community policing. This tradition predates formation of modern policing system (Millie and Wells, 2019; Ren et al., 2006). Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police called on Nigerians to be ready to participate in ensuring community safety and national security. ³ In the United States, direct citizens’ participation in neighbourhood safety contributed to crime decline in the 1990s (Warren, 1998). While poor mobilisation of community actors may not yield crime preventive efforts (Van Graan, 2016), effective resident mobilisation for safety activity has the capacity to fill the gap of insufficient police personnel in Nigeria. Rogers (2009) noted that community involvement in crime prevention enhances community ownership of crime management and lowers cost of policing.

Participation in neighbourhood policing is a contribution to public good in which residents coproduce peaceful communities. Brudney (1989) defines coproduction of public goods as ‘the cooperative relationship between government on the one hand and citizens, neighbourhood associations, community organisations or client groups, on the other for the delivery of public services’ (p. 513). Having crime-free communities is both beneficial for residents and government, hence, the need to synergise towards the production of crime-free environment. It is thought that empowering people to solve their own problems through creative interventions will yield fruitful results than when it is left to government agencies alone (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Consequently, community mobilisation towards having a secured environment involves taking problem-solving approaches to ward-off criminality in communities and neighbourhoods. It may also imply annexing the social capital within the community, such as social groups, churches, mosques and landlord associations among others towards having a peaceful environment. Against the background that police cannot effectively curb crime without the backing of the public and the need for community to play a key role in mobilising against crime in their locality (Van Graan, 2016), this paper examines how communities in Awotan, Oyo State, mobilised residents as patrol and vigilance groups against fear of crime victimisation during COVID-19 lockdown.

Crime occurrence during lockdown varied with new spaces of victimisation emerging including the cyberspace (Tade, 2021). De la Miyar et al. (2020) posited that stay-at-home order transforms the nature of crime in Mexico. A study conducted by Campedelli et al. (2020) in Chicago examined how community-level crime trends changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They asserted that reduction in criminal opportunities led to reduction in crimes. According to them, while certain part of the city experienced reduction, others did not and this is partly due to the contextual features of communities. In essence, while certain crimes reduced because of reduced opportunities, others did not because of increased opportunities to commit them. Mohler et al. (2020) in their comparative study of Indianapolis and Los Angeles found no effect of lockdown on assault-battery, decrease in robbery and burglary, but an increase in domestic violence. Also, Hodgkinson and Andresen (2020) in their study in Canada reported reduction in residential burglary, commercial burglary and car theft. The finding of Poblete-Cazenave in India is not different. He found that lockdown occasioned by COVID-19-reduced domestic violence, burglary, kidnapping, murder and robbery. From Mexico, de la Miyar et al. (2020) report that conventional crimes declined while organised crimes maintain similar level of activities than it was before the pandemic. Providing explanation for increase in domestic violence, Campbell (2020) opined that people are trapped in the home with violent perpetrator because of their limitation to move outside as they would have liked. He explained that the stresses of job losses, limited resources and limited social support and alcohol abuse may have contributed to such violence. This author showed that the plight of victims of domestic violence can be addressed if community members endeavour to report such cases to appropriate agencies to take mitigation steps. Above all, we need to understand the response of communities to incidences of crime during lockdown in a developing country like Nigeria in order to appreciate how collective vulnerability of people can lead to the communities to take up the responsibility to protect themselves by leveraging on available resources within their spaces. Community efforts at securing themselves will unpack how COVID-19-induced criminality exposed the limitations of the state in providing security for her citizens and how the citizens become critical component in the emergency security provisioning.

Methods and research settings

The research was exploratory and was conducted in Awotan Residential community in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State. The community has an enlightened populace of professionals (lawyers, medical doctors and academics) and youth who mostly work in the informal sector of the economy. Awotan community is made up of about seven zones with its own executives. While each zone has its executives, there is also the Central Community Development Association (CDA), where all zones send representatives for monthly meeting, where issues affecting the entire Awotan are discussed from environment, security, health and payment of dues. The Central CDA also intervenes in zonal issues when needed. Each zone sends representatives to attend central executive meeting where they discuss issues in each zone, including finding collective solutions to issues affecting any zone. They also levy members for projects of communal benefits, such as road grading and electricity transformer payment. There is a central gate leading into the Awotan community with each zone having its own border demarcation with name and iron lock that restricts movement into areas at certain times of the night. The central gate is locked around 11 pm and opened at 5 am.

It is about 15 minutes to the Polytechnic Ibadan and 20 minutes to the University of Ibadan and these accounts for why the population of residents work in some of these establishments. There are also students of these institutions inhabiting the community. Before the coronavirus pandemic, there were cases of burglary during daytime than at night. However, the bordering community of Apete witnessed attacks by robbers during which landlords were attacked and properties carted away in the heat of corona virus partial lockdown in the state (Atanda, 2020). ⁴ This perhaps led to the community mobilisation against perceived COVID-19-induced criminality in many neighbourhoods around the state including Awotan. The new template of residents policing their communities evolved from existing framework. Before the COVID-19 partial lockdown, each zone within the Awotan community hired night guard to keep watch while they sleep, but the numbers of hired security guard were grossly inadequate considering the size of the communities under Awotan. The night guards were then assisted by landlords and their male children, as well as male tenants during the night community patrol/policing operation.

Data collection was qualitative in nature. It involved utilising participant observation by the author who is a member of one of the communities in Awotan and in-depth interviews were with the Awotan central president and 14 persons (residents and landlords) who participated in the community security at night. In all, 15 participants whose age ranged between 30 and 58 were interviewed. They were asked the reasons for communal mobilisation, effectiveness of the community vigilante work and reasons why landlords and their children participated in keeping watch over their communities at night. The interviews were transcribed and coded for themes in line with the set-out objectives of the study. These were subjected to thematic analysis and presented with the participant observation of this author at the sub-community level of the mobilisation.

‘We are proactive against the thieves’: factors underlying mobilisation

Oyo State, one of the states in southwest Nigeria was among the few states whose governor decided not to impose total lockdown despite the fact that it is less than 2 hours from Lagos, the epicentre of COVID-19 infection in Nigeria. Only food items and essentials like drugs were allowed into the state. While there was also interstate restriction, the state also mobilised against people entering the state by allocating money for full enforcement of the restriction and curfew orders. Before this, public workers were stopped from going to work while private businesses like hospitality (hotels), finance (banking) and education (schools) were shut down. But since the economy was practically down, daily subsistence earners began to feel the strain, news of burglary, theft and armed attacks started and this was the immediate cause of neighbourhood mobilisation against criminals using the adverse effects of the COVID-19 partial lockdown as the basis to attack homes. This was the situation in Awotan community where three of the adjoining communities had been attacked by armed robbers. The Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the community met with zonal executives where simultaneous proactive community mobilisation was agreed upon and undertaken. It involved each community manning its own borders and patrolling dark spots. The president of the community stated the reason underlying the community mobilisation exercise during the partial lockdown:

The neighbouring communities were being attacked and robbed. Pápá community was robbed. At Aderogba community, the thieves came on motorcycles but we mobilised to that community to resist them. We modified the vigilante operation and patrol. This approach worked for us because we did not experience any robbery in our community since we adopted concurrent patrol operation. (IDI/Male/President of Central Landlord Association/Awotan community)

Resistance was ensured through the synergy of all communities working with their night guards and with regular communication. To ensure that every community executive led by their chairmen implemented the recommendation, the CEC president was observed moving across the communities during the patrol with his executives during the night vigilante exercise. How did the community coordinate or organise the community vigilante against COVID-19-induced criminality in their area?

Discussion and conclusion

The involvement of communities in their own security dates back to precolonial Nigeria when traditional institution maintained social control to protect lives and properties of their people. While colonialisation brought the formal policing system, originally used as an agent of colonial domination of indigenous peoples, post-colonial Nigeria shows how communities rose up to defend their communities through the formation of night guards comprising hunters, age grade, masquerade across cultures with recorded successes (Alemika, 1988; Aniche, 2018; Ikuteyijo and Rotimi, 2012; Onyeozili, 2005). With inability of the police to reach all communities in Nigeria due to logistic challenges and personnel among others, communities established their own informal security and employ night guards to ensure their safety. Communities have been involved in the security architecture of Nigeria prior to the outset of COVID-19. This is because the formal policing system that is centralised is fraught with challenges on insufficient personnel, logistics and equipment challenges among others. It was therefore in this milieu that communities used existing structures of mobilisation against security threat to counter the peculiar threat of insecurity occasioned COVID-19. Through police-community relations, intelligence sharing takes place where the security advices communities to step up vigilance. This situates communities as critical component of security architecture in the country that must be engaged for a fruitful neutralisation of criminal threats and victimisation. It follows that since crime is local, community involvement positions them as the first responder to their own security.

Thus, COVID-19-induced criminality met these existing structures of community vigilance groups that were expanded and modified to suit the level of perceived threat. This structures inspired the community mobilisation against armed robbery. Proactive steps by the community leadership association were instrumental to the general mobilisation witnessed during the period. To appreciate the imperative of the security threat to the community, sensitisation meeting was organised where zonal chairmen were briefed on the security challenges facing neighbouring communities and an attempt that has been made on one of the communities in Awotan that was repelled. The decentralised mobilisation strategy was functional and empowered zonal executives who understood peculiar community characteristics to own the security of their community and recruit people for joint community patrol.

To police their communities, members were mobilised through house-to-house call by paid night guards together with community executive members. Territorial mapping, border security and simultaneous community patrol functionally worked to secure the community during this period. Through burn fires with the use of disposed car tyres, the community was lighted and the billowing of the fire functioned to inform prospecting offenders that the community was under vigilante watch.

Stay-at-home-order transforms the nature of offending and criminality (de la Miyar et al., 2020). This is because the declaration of partial lockdown, occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic in Oyo State, attractive target seemed to have shifted to businesses around neighbourhoods which became more vulnerable to attacks. Besides the businesses around residential areas, the restriction of movement of people to their homes meant that people are more likely to be found in the neighbourhood than where they would have been found before the lockdown, such as workplace, markets, club houses, roads among others. Proximity to the site of an initial crime could be a probable factor in setting up neighbourhood patrol team. What this means is that, people are likely to join neighbourhood watch when they perceive themselves as potential victims and when they are closer to initial space of crime occurrence. To them increasing neighbourhood watch will impact positively on the safety of their communities. The fact that the communities were not robbed after all was seen as proof of effective crime prevention. This may have occurred because joint neighbourhood watch increased guardianship over communities. This aligns with the position of Felson et al. (2020) who noted that capable guardianship will reduce criminal opportunities and victimisation.

Fear of insecurity may be induced by media reports, perceived vulnerability to criminal victimisation, previous victimisation experience (Foster et al., 2016) and proximity to scene of crime occurrence that triggered the community response to form neighbourhood watch and secure their communities. In this case, proximity of the Awotan community to the community that had experienced crime during the lockdown activated residents of Awotan to mount community policing. Sadd and Grinc (1994) observed that commitment of members of the community is needed to provide effective citizens patrol operations. This commitment is focussed on their collective desire to save the community from crime victimisation since any successful operation in any part of the community will open up more criminal opportunities and precipitate greater fear of victimisation. This is because, participation in community policing is a joint contribution towards creating a safe haven – the public good. In essence, the coproduction of an orderly, crime-free neighbourhood is beneficial not only to the community, but also to the security of the state. The communities who organised the neighbourhood policing did so to improve their life chances and enhance social order. While the aged were not mobilised to participate, they, however, sent their younger children to participate in order to be seen to be concerned and involved in the neighbourhood crime prevention activities. Landlords and tenants sent representatives to participate in the community policing in order to show the importance of a secured community to the individuals and collective. Participation is, therefore, conflated by the need to solve existential crime problem (Zhao et al., 2002). They all participated for the collective wellbeing of the community. Solidarity and belonging are elements of social cohesion that may as well facilitate social order.

Community mobilisation against perceived security threats during COVID-19 in low-income neighbourhood unpacks the functionality of community policing for the overall security system. It unearths security as a personal issue which aligns with the Yoruba saying around issues of security. By saying ààbò ara eni ni ààbò ìlú (a secured household is a secured community), the Yoruba people understand the functional role of individual security as the collective security and how a compromised individual security could increase community vulnerability to criminal victimisation. The sense is that if each person is safe, then the community is safe. While this community mobilisation was triggered by fear of victimisation arising from COVID-19 restrictions, its usefulness is signposted as a veritable policing strategy that should be fully explored in Nigeria, so that, communities can monitor, own and mobilise internal mechanisms of social control before escalating to the state if need be. Beyond COVID-19-induced security threat, embracing decentralised policing system which incorporates the people in security architecture will contribute to security at the national and sub-national levels.