Partnership policing: Is it relevant in Kano,Nigeria?

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which African approaches to policing challenge western preferences for transparent and equitable forms of partnership-based policing. It uses the experience of the Nigeria Police Force in metropolitan Kano to question the value of police–public partnerships as the best way to tackle crime and communal conflict in cities where multiple religious and secular norms and processes affect the meaning and delivery of security and justice. Based on recent fieldwork, the article argues that while the need to negotiate with Kano’s semi-state and informal policing providers has not reconfigured the Nigerian police’s authority practices, the city’s relative stability owes much to the political and technical skills with which senior officers manage Kano’s competitive environment. Policing in Kano emphasizes the need for clarity of purpose, actionable intelligence and robust operations, rather than partnership.

Keywords

Community-based policing Islam Nigeria partnership police vigilantes

This article explores the ways in which African approaches to policing challenge western preferences for transparent and equitable forms of governance based on partnerships. It uses the experience of a major police force in Anglophone Africa – in this case, Nigeria’s – to question the value of partnership as the best way to tackle crime and communal conflict in cities where multiple religious and secular norms and processes affect the meaning and delivery of security and justice.

Organized around the activities of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in metropolitan Kano, the biggest city in Nigeria’s Islamic north, the article analyses the boundaries between the NPF and alternative policing providers such as traditional authorities, the Kano command of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria and the state-sponsored Islamic militia known as Hisba. Based on two months’ fieldwork,¹ it explores how the NPF helps to make Kano function for the benefit of both its officers and residents, and assesses the part played by partnership in this. It argues that Kano’s experience challenges the belief that partnerships can and should play a critical role in policing, just as it questions the assumption that police should actively collaborate with local non-state providers, and it cautions against analysing the activities of multiple providers primarily in terms of plural policing. Although the notion of plural or parallel policing systems is suggestive of Kano’s situation (as are metaphors of networks and nodal governance), it assumes that the behaviour and practices of the NPF and groups such as Hisba intersect to form a consistent approach or nexus of connected actors, which is not necessarily the case.²

Metropolitan Kano

Western criminologists, criminal justice scholars, politicians and practitioners promote the notion of partnership as a way of facilitating efficient and effective policing, and as a means to build trust between police and local people (e.g. Bullock et al., 2006; Clear and Hamilton, 2010; Rogers, 2006).³ So do donors such as the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), which between 2002 and 2009 channelled some £37 million to reforming or improving Nigeria’s security and justice sector by means such as community-based policing, problem-oriented policing and police–public partnerships (OSCE, 2008; Tilley, 2003: 311–339).⁴ Indeed, there is now an emergent policy orthodoxy that policing is a multi-layered activity requiring police to co-operate with informal providers (Albrecht and Kyed, 2010; Baker, 2009; compare Findlay and Zvekić, 1993; contrast Bayley, 2011).

Transferring practices dependent on trust – and partnerships require trust – to countries such as Nigeria is problematic (Sasaki and Marsh, 2011). Trust is a belief about future behaviour or developments that serves as a basis for conduct, but inter-personal trust is low throughout Nigeria. Levels of violence are, however, high, and Kano has a history of communal conflict, which in 2005 prompted the New York-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW, 2005: 57) to warn that it ‘remains one of the more volatile towns in the north’. And the police are often implicated in security’s breakdown. Indeed, HRW’s observation after the 2005 riots remains apposite: the dozens of extra-judicial killings carried out by police ‘were typical of their response to inter-communal violence’ (HRW, 2005: 57). Yet despite low levels of trust, and despite the bombings and killings carried out since January 2012 by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram (BBC News, 2012), Kano no longer seems to be a city ‘where violence is most likely to erupt when there are tensions elsewhere in the country’. What is contributing towards this relative stability? Are the city’s policing providers co-operating? Does partnership policing play a role? Kano provides an ideal case in which to explore these issues; it represents a major example of the community plurality that is commonly seen as requiring partnership-based policing if it is to be relatively peaceful. Not only do diverse definitions influence the provision of policing, but also the apparent failure of the notoriously brutal, corrupt and ineffective NPF to provide adequate security and justice has encouraged the activities of a range of alternative providers.

At first glance, policing in Kano reflects a secular federal police’s engagement with an Islamic urban society. However, while this issue is present it cannot explain fully the nature and style of the city’s policing, which is moulded by Kano’s history (Paden, 1973), social and ethnic environment, and political and religious significance: despite being in relative decline as a market, Kano remains the economic and cultural metropolis of the Hausa-speaking world, and is Nigeria’s largest city after Lagos. Its population has increased tenfold in the last 50 years, from 250,000 in 1961 to more than 2.8 million according to the 2006 census, 95 per cent of who are Hausa Muslims, with the majority Sunni.

Kano has pockets of wealth (though cultural norms mean that conspicuous consumption is avoided), but most people lack easy access to potable water, sanitation, medicine, education and transport (Maconachie, 2007). Commercial, industrial and residential sectors are characterized by over-crowding, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and drug abuse, and are recruiting grounds for the gangs politicians use to mobilize rallies, and intimidate opponents. And politics are a greater source of tension than religion or ethnicity, reflecting political divisions between and within the state’s dominant parties, rather than, as in northern towns such as Kaduna, religious rivalries.

The NPF’s ability to police this environment is limited, so low-level policing is provided by diverse actors with diverse objectives (compare Baker, 2008). Even so, there is no coherent overall scheme whereby the various practices ‘intersect to form [the] consistent system of action’ required for publicly recognized plural policing (Manning quoted in Wood and Dupont, 2006: 4). Thus the NPF retains its constitutional role even as it fails to provide adequate security, and is complemented or supplemented by self-help community protection groups such as vigilantes and trade associations, and by the traditional forms of dispute resolution and intelligence gathering (both of which may be described as policing) provided by the Emir of Kano’s administration. As this implies, policing is an ambiguous term that refers to the problem-solving activities that groups (which may be federal, state sponsored or neighbourhood-based) engage in to facilitate their preferred forms of security and justice. It should really be distinguished from police or law-enforcement work, which concerns what public police are required to do (this is itself controversial), but in practice boundaries blur because both may deal with the low-level crime, disturbances and traffic control that are police work in the West.

Two consequences follow. First, Kano’s policing providers divide into constitutionally legitimate forces (e.g. the NPF) and culturally legitimate groups (e.g. Hisba), rather than state and non-state groups or groups exemplifying legal pluralism.⁵ Second, Kano’s approach to policing challenges international preferences for transparently accountable forms of governance based on trust. For despite its inherent weaknesses, the NPF contributes to stability by exploiting the dynamics and flexibilities of Kano’s environment, rather than by partnering stakeholders with which it shares a common understanding or agenda (UNDPKO, 2009: i); senior officers must manage tensions and threats while acknowledging the legitimate demands of Islamic groups, delivering the NPF’s objectives (e.g. crime reduction), accommodating its internal politics and protecting themselves (job security is minimal and Boko Haram targets police). Consequently, the ways in which the NPF handles Kano’s policing offers insight into its assessment of partnerships.

Police Business

Metropolitan Kano is policed as part of the NPF’s Zone 1 Command, which comprises the state commands of Kano, Katsina and Jigawa. There are 12 zonal commands and Zone 1 is ‘one of the biggest and most violent commands in the country’ (Nigeria Police Force, 2008: 144, 134). Armed robbery is the dominant serious crime, with robbery the most common and kidnapping a major problem (Leadership, 2010b; compare CLEEN, 2009), but newspapers also report drug abuse, especially of traditional drugs such as Indian hemp (Dukku, 2010; TheNews, 2010a, 2010b), and gender-based violent crime (girls selling goods on the streets are particularly vulnerable). Meanwhile, police patrols speak of black spots in commercial areas where women are assaulted, and pick-pocketing and shoplifting occur (Radda et al., 2010: 6–7). Police and public alike believe densely populated areas with bad lighting to be dangerous because they attract youths who supplement shoe-shining, nail cutting and hawking with petty crime and drug taking. Incomers living in central Kano’s so-called new town (Sabon Gari) are widely regarded as quarrelsome, violent and prone to abuse alcohol, drugs and sex whereas Kano’s Islamic nature raises crime issues such as underage marriage.

Three features affecting the way the NPF does business and assesses partnerships deserve note. First, force policy is that officers should work away from their home area, and while many come from Kano and Kaduna states most arrive knowing little about the city. Instead, the NPF must rely on the experience and contacts of long-serving officers; Kano command’s combined population of 5–6 million is policed by approximately 6000 officers,⁶ none of which have access to the equivalent of Abuja’s Geographic and Information System (AGIS), or Lagos’ crime mapping projects. Further, Kano’s shortage of manpower, vehicles and communications equipment impacts on officers’ operational efficiency and morale and, therefore, relationship with the populace.⁷ It also suggests that the NPF’s activities cannot be understood in isolation from that of other policing providers; its failure to provide neighbourhood security has encouraged vigilantes and commercial companies to proliferate, and it depends on information collected by local officials and informants. This affects the ways in which officers’ federal-based power is translated and perceived in some everyday local settings.

Second, while the flexibility and discretion permitted to officers managing the resultant relationships is unclear, it must be affected by the hierarchical nature of the police institution, Kano’s sensitivities and the political skills of the commissioner (i.e. the city’s senior officer). Just as significant improvements in police–public relations in Lagos, 2009–2010, were widely attributed to Commissioner Marvel Akpoyivo, so similar trends were evident in Kano where in early 2011 Commissioner Tambari Yabo Muhammad introduced the policing style that had enabled him to reduce crime and violence in Kaduna, 150 miles to the south-west. (Muhammad was in post, December 2010–July 2011.)

Third, discretion and political skill may be central to the NPF’s role in managing Kano’s complex and competitive environment, but it has little to do with the ‘management by negotiation’ or trust-based networked operations identified in analyses of liberal democracies such as the UK (Fleming and Rhodes, 2005: 195). Instead, the suspicion and volatility characterizing Kano’s environment requires that the regular police be backed by the paramilitary Police Mobile Force (PMF), which was established as an anti-riot squad capable of countering communal disturbances, banditry, insurrection and militants when regular police cannot cope. The PMF keep a low profile in Kano, but it is sometimes suggested that the populace regard them as the real police. Only regular officers can join the PMF, but the two are visibly distinct: the PMF wear khaki and black uniforms made of military-quality cloth that takes razor-sharp creases whereas regular police wear black and blue uniforms which do not. Also, the PMF receive special public-order training, which is popularly thought to make them ‘agile, alert, serious, colourful and attractive’ to a public concerned by Kano’s crime and insecurity (private communication, indigene, Kano, 2 December 2010). This, combined with their operational effectiveness, encourages people to regard them with respect and confidence, as well as distrust and fear; they act quickly if brutally, and are called on for help by victims in distress during, for example, armed robberies or gang fights. In other words, the NPF is an occupation force (albeit a constitutionally legitimate one) that relies on coercion to achieve its aims.

The attitude of rank and file officers to the local populace is difficult to judge, but alienation is probably exacerbated by their working conditions and accommodation. Thus training for general officers in the lower ranks is non-existent, while the barracks for regular police in the central areas of Bompai and Gabon Sari range from inadequate to disgusting even though officers up to the rank of inspector (and in some cases assistant superintendents) live there. But pay may be less of an issue than officers claim. The average monthly income of a low-ranking patrol officer living in barracks is Naira 60,000 (£246) (Radda et al., 2010: 32) while an assistant superintendent earns between N75,000 (£300) and N80,000 (£320), and a chief superintendent approximately N180,000 (£739) monthly. While income depends on rank regardless of years of service (most officers serve between 10 and 34 years), and is subject to skimming by senior officers, this compares favourably with a civil servants’ wage of N14,750.00 (US$118) (ADF, undated) or the N10,000 (£59) monthly income of traditional drug sellers (Dukku, 2010). Kano’s gross national income per capita is US$1140.00 (£735) according to IBRD/World Bank 2010.

Surprisingly, it appears that religion does not explicitly influence officers’ attitudes or police business more generally. There are no publicly available statistics, but senior officers refer to 60 per cent of the force as Muslim and 40 per cent Christian (interview, senior NPF officer, Kano, 2 December 2010). Being Hausa does not necessarily mean being Muslim, though there are a number of practising Muslims in the senior ranks judging from the number referred to as Alhaji, a title given to West African Muslim men who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. For example, in June 2011, the Kano State Commissioner of Police (CP) was Alhaji Tambari Yabo Muhammad, the Assistant Inspector General (AIG) in charge of Zone 1 was Alhaji Abubakar Muhammed, while then Inspector General (IG) Hafiz Ringim is a devout Muslim who was born in Zamfara, and has links to Kano (in 1990 he commanded the ninth PMF Squadron whose barracks are on Kano’s Maiduguri Road). Northerners dominate the NPF’s senior ranks (TheNews, 2011).

The NPF does not enforce Kano’s Shari’a criminal code, but, given the communal conflict that occurred when Shari’a was introduced in 2000, it might be thought that Shari’a is an additional challenge, complicating the NPF’s often acrimonious relationship with, for example, Hisba. This is not the case; senior officers say that it has simplified, rather than complicated, policing. Although the law does not distinguish between religion and secular issues – something is an offence or it is not, and Shari’a’s distinctions between desirable and forbidden acts are irrelevant – Shari’a enables officers to enforce certain legal rulings at a distance and with minimal effort. Hisba, which was created to monitor the implementation of Shari’a, deals with alcohol and adultery more easily than NPF officers (compare Olaniyi, 2009; Ostien et al., 2005; Weimann, 2007). However, the result is grudging co-existence, rather than partnership.

In practice, the key environmental challenges confronting the NPF do not concern religion or places of origin so much as the volatility of local politics, the legacy of earlier violence and – increasingly – the presence of Boko Haram. In November 2010 Deputy IG (DIG) Alhaji Abubakar Sardauna said that his greatest challenge while in command of Zone 1 was Boko Haram’s insurgency in Wudil, 26 miles from Kano (TheWill, 2010), and similar concerns were expressed by Kano’s current commissioner, Ibrahim Kpotun Idris in late 2011 (PMNews, 2011). Their fears were realized on 12 January 2012 when Boko Haram began a campaign of co-ordinated bombings and killings that caused hundreds of deaths. Significantly, the challenges Boko Haram presents are exacerbated by the police’s ineffectiveness, lack of accurate intelligence and links between some senior police and military officers and Boko Haram (Africa Confidential, 2012), as much as by the public’s distrust of the police. Indeed, it is easy to over-estimate the significance of distrust in a city such as Kano, and it is probable that ineffectiveness plays a more critical role. Hence the PMF is seen as doing its job in an authoritative and effective manner despite the impunity with which its members often act.⁸

Intelligence’s Critical Role

Managing Kano requires a range of solutions. Improved logistics and training are necessary but not sufficient to improve the NPF’s effectiveness, which affects the quality of its intelligence and management of local actors. Further, the NPF’s room for manoeuvre is limited by its remit, resources and internal politics, and by Kano’s position as the Mecca of the Muslim North, which gives it bargaining power with the federal authorities. Consequently, senior officers are advised to work amicably with Kano’s traditional and religious enforcement bodies (private communication, mid-ranking NPF officer, Kano, 14 November 2010). But even if they were not, officers wish to develop reasonable working relationships with Kano’s alternative providers because conflict and acrimony complicates their job, attracts the attention of national and international media (thereby potentially threatening their career) and may challenge their personal moral standards. Hence DIG Sardauna advised his successor in Zone 1 to ‘work closely with traditional rulers, members of the public, commissioners of police under his command and the press to guarantee success’ (TheWill, 2010). He argued that this worked during his two years in Zone 1 in that ‘religious crises, political instability and criminal activities … were brought down to the barest minimum’. But no one, least of all Sardauna, understands this as a partnership. Instead of facilitating the development of a common agenda, the constraints under which the NPF operates have, in combination with Kano’s traditional preference for informal negotiation (Ehrhardt, 2007), encouraged senior officers to develop a manipulative style of policing that enables them to prevent, mitigate or manage many tensions before they reach the dangerous stage. The result is a pragmatic approach based on intelligence assessments, proactive policing and bargaining that exploits the flexibilities of the environment, rather than shared objectives. But to make Kano function in the first instance, the NPF needs actionable intelligence.

Frequently, violence erupts or escalates because officers misinterpret early warning signals, or fail to share knowledge, rather than because working relationships fail. As IG Ringim argued in December 2010, ‘most conflicts erupt … due to neglect of early warning signals by politicians and government officials’ (Daily Trust, 2010b). Also, the NPF sees partnerships as a means to, or by-product of, more immediate objectives such as crime reduction, and while partnerships between, for example, police and military exist, they tend to result in brutality or extra-judicial killings, rather than democratic-style policing (Al Jazeera, 2010). Even so, Alhaji Aliyu Attah, IG under General Babangida’s military regime, blamed increased crime on the failure of Nigeria’s security agencies to co-operate (Sun, 2010); that is, form working relationships. He argued that the NPF, State Security Service (SSS), Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) should ‘close ranks and embark on a well-coordinated approach to intelligence gathering and sharing’. In a similar vein, Tribune (2011) believes that the federal government should ‘re-engineer the intelligence mechanism’ of the NPF, the SSS, the DMI and the NIA ‘to make them alive to their responsibilities’. Whatever the case, proficient police work depends primarily on timely intelligence, accurate risk assessment and technical skills.

The reliability of the NPF’s intelligence capabilities is difficult to assess but Kano’s combination of established networks, informal liaison arrangements and leadership partly explain why it was able to mitigate the effects of Nigeria’s flawed intelligence arrangements, and avoid much of the violence seen in cities such as Maiduguri, the capital of the north-eastern state of Borno, where the police were unable to identify Boko Haram. Significantly, it also managed to avoid the ‘corruption, negligence, carelessness in handling arms and ammunitions, and … poor attitude to work’ characterizing Maidugurie’s officers (Guardian, 2010). Kano’s intelligence arrangements were far from perfect, as a critical British Council report delivered in the summer of 2010 showed (Peace & Conflict Monitor, 2010). Even so, the NPF is able to draw on information from, for example, an Emirate system based on resilient Islamic institutions and monitoring by hereditary ward and district heads. This is limited in comparison with what it was in the 1960s, but ward heads report disturbances and the presence of strangers to the 44 district heads responsible for Kano’s territory and administrative departments who report to the Emirate authorities.

The Emirate’s record of intelligence-gathering is one aspect of a broader picture, but it suggests the extent to which Kano’s authorities rely on informal processes and relationships that have little in common with western policing partnerships. Also, it emphasizes that while the NPF must rely on information collected by others to supplement its paid informants, and despite its success at exploiting the flexibilities of Kano’s environment, it does not intend to develop strategic partnerships. Ringim, for example, never called for partnership-based policing. Instead he stressed that ‘what is required is not some ad-hoc measures or ill-considered populist steps, but a comprehensive plan that carefully considers such issues as training, equipping and completely re-orienting the mentality of the … Nigerian police’ (Daily Trust, 2010a; compare NPF, 2010). However, while the NPF remains a reactive force with a tendency to go in late and heavily (especially in public order situations), it is increasingly common to hear that the police must be proactive. Hence the emphasis now placed on intelligence-led policing, anti-crime initiatives and community policing.

Proactive Policing Kano-Style

On arrival in Kano in December 2010, Commissioner Muhammad promised to introduce a proactive style of policing exemplifying a locally acceptable form of community policing that owes little to partnership (private communication, senior NPF officer, Kano, 13 January 2011). He stressed his commitment to an ‘open door’ policy (the telephone numbers of senior officers are publicly available), but specifically promised to introduce anti-crime initiatives similar to those he had pioneered in Kaduna State in 2008 with Operation Yaki (i.e. terror). Describing Yaki as ‘the beginning of wisdom’, as Muhammad’s successor in Kaduna (Ballah Magaji Nasarawa) did, may be seen as undesirable by donors, but Nasarawa’s mission statement reflected local priorities: ‘to reduce crime to the barest minimum and to ensure that the rule of law and fundamental rights of citizens are adequately protected’. He planned to do this by ‘aggressive raids’, ‘constant patrols’ and ‘vigorously’ pursuing community policing (Vintage Herald, 2010), and NPF press conferences suggest that similar approaches are to be implemented in Kano too. Significantly, Kaduna-style community policing is about residents giving information to officers, rather than officers providing a service to residents.

In fact, Yaki cannot be transferred easily. Not only is Yaki’s paramilitarism inappropriate for Kano, but also its level of resourcing is unlikely to be equalled. That Kaduna is home to many retired senior officers and officials helps to explain why, in 2008, 700 policemen and 500 PMF were deployed with military personnel ‘to create a … mobile … and flexible police force to phase out crime in the state’ (Kaduna State Government, 2008). Yaki received an initial 70 Toyota Hilux trucks, 200 motor cycles and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to link them, supplemented later in the year by 30 additional Hilux, 250 motor cycles and 1000 bullet proof vests donated by the US ambassador. Further, in addition to their normal salaries and entitlements, Yaki officers receive special allowances, insurance, monetary compensation for death during duty, medical care, allowances and perks that regular police can only dream of. According to the state’s commissioner for information, this is financed by the governor’s security votes; that is, it comes at no extra cost to the federal government. But for most people, Yaki’s attraction is that it works; crime has fallen and ethno-religious crises have for now ceased. This approach has been widely welcomed in Kano.

Managing Relationships

Regardless of public perceptions, Kano’s relative stability owes more to the professional and political skills of the NPF’s senior officers than to aggressive raids or partnership.⁹ To navigate (i.e. manoeuvre) between Kano’s power brokers and policing providers, the NPF relies on liaison arrangements that are developed in the light of its requirements and vary according to the status of the group concerned. And the boundaries between the various actors are unambiguous: the NPF’s clarity comes from knowing that its remit is non-negotiable (something is either legal or it is illegal), Hisba pursues an Islamic agenda, and vigilantes protect their property. Bargaining may be necessary, but compromise is not seen as strength, and the various actors tolerate or accommodate each other’s rationalities only when forced to. There are no formal parallel policing systems (as in a complex and connected whole), policing has not been reconfigured fundamentally, and while coexistence is a strong theme, Kano’s policing remains best understood in relation to the NPF. The ways in which the NPF handles points of interface between the various actors is consequently informative.

Competition, collaboration and co-existence

The NPF’s relations with federal enforcement agencies present in Kano are fraught; all compete for scarce resources, and in some cases responsibilities overlap. For example, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), a paramilitary agency established in 2007 to guard against threats to national infrastructure, openly challenges the role of the NPF at the national level,¹⁰ while the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) challenges officers’ conduct. Against this, some officers see agencies such as the EFCC as specialist allies they can collaborate with; while EFCC activities do not affect Kano’s populace, its interest in money laundering and terrorism-related funding is directly relevant to the NPF. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is another agency with which it must reach an understanding.¹¹ But regardless of tensions, the current security situation ensures that senior officers from such agencies meet frequently. The structure of a meeting in Kaduna in May 2010 may be taken as indicative. After an open session in which the need for co-operation in solving ethno-religious conflicts was emphasized, the meeting went into closed session with the commissioner, SSS director, army and air force commanders, security advisers to the governors and officials from the Jama’at Nasnil Islam (JNI) and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) (This Day, 2010). (The army and air force are background presences but have minimal involvement in routine policing.)

The police have a more collaborative relationship with professional bodies such as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), and also the private sector such as Jaiz International Bank, Nigeria’s first Islamic bank. Although they do not police, the NPF is interested in their professional base, which can be used for or against it. Consequently, senior officers court their support, attending their functions and inviting them to contribute to press communiqués. On occasions, the NPF collaborates with civil society organizations and strategic interest groups which police their own members or environment, too. These include the Market Traders Association, Okada Riders Association, Yam Traders Association and local leaders of, for example, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. But relations between these groups and the NPF are often strained, partly because they exist because of police inadequacies, and partly because they do not have the influence of professional bodies; middle-cadre officers deal with them. Similar considerations apply to Kano’s long-established Police Community Relations Committees (PCRC) whose membership includes village and ward heads and Islamic scholars, and which can play a critical role in patrolling. In the interests of better police–community relations, Commissioner Muhammad instructed superintendents to attend PCRC meetings in some local government authorities, but this did not increase PCRC’s influence (Daily Triumph, 2010b; Radda et al., 2010: 49).

The NPF must also deal with Kano’s ethnic and religious groups, and in particular with Hisba which challenges its secular understanding of policing and community security. Admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that an informal system of communication and understanding exists between the NPF and Kano’s religious authorities whereby sensitive or potentially controversial issues are whenever possible dealt with unofficially (private communication, mid-ranking NPF officer, Kano, 14 November 2010): the NPF enforces secular aspects of the law by virtue of its statutory backing while Hisba handles religious matters on the basis of its religious authority. When there is stalemate concerning the categorization of issues, an ad-hoc committee meets to resolve the issue before it becomes public knowledge. Yet it would be inaccurate to describe this approach as promoting partnerships intended to facilitate effective policing. While many senior officers are articulate, and professionally and politically adept, and some have international experience and knowledge of management trends, NPF responses are typically ad hoc and short-term. Discretion and political skill, rather than strategy, are more critical for effective police management in Kano’s competitive environment, and co-existence, association and contestation are more typical than co-operation or partnership.

High- and low-level co-existence are best seen in the light of the NPF’s dealings with the Emirate Council and the Kano command of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, while contestation characterizes its relations with Hisba.

Cultivation

The NPF interacts with the Emir, Alhaji Ado Bayero, and his administration in a variety of ways. The Emir has had no formal influence over policing since independence, but senior officers pay courtesy visits to solicit his support and blessing, as when the newly posted AIG in charge of Zone I, Alhaji Abubakar Muhammad, stressed his readiness to work with the Emirate Council, and spoke of their joint commitment to promoting peace, unity, law and order (Daily Triumph, 2010a). The Emir responded that the Emirate Council (over which he presides) would support the NPF in maintaining law and order, but that officers must ‘adhere strictly to the ethics of their profession’ and achieve success ‘by protecting lives and property’. The NPF’s presence at court is otherwise limited to a small number of constables and sergeants seconded to the Emir’s security detail, and a police orderly attached to the Emir. Policing problems are forwarded to Kwalli division, in which the palace lies.

The Emirate receives five per cent of all funds given to local government (total annual government receipts are unknown), but the Emir’s influence owes more to his ambiguous position between state and society. His authority is reinforced by his control of the Emirate’s intelligence and monitoring system, oversight of the Shari’a court system and close links to the state government through the Emirate Council, and the state and local government security committees. However, while the Emirate Council supports moves that promote Islam and the social order associated with it (Daily Trust, 2010d), it also displays a strong preference for disputes within communities, and between communities and the state, to be resolved informally, rather than through the formal law enforcement channels of a federal state that fails to provide the justice, mediation and reconciliation services that Islam advocates (Blench et al., 2006: 20; Ehrhardt, 2009; Paden, 2005). Nonetheless, the Emir is a valuable ally with whom the NPF appears to have developed a certain understanding.

Toleration

The Emirate Council sits at the apex of Kano’s traditional Islamic communities, and its role as adviser to the state government allows it institutional access to the federal government. In contrast, the Kano command of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria – of which the Emir is patron – is an established, legitimate and popular security organization that supplements the NPF’s work, but receives minimal support in return. Created in 1982, and registered as a company in 1999, it numbers 19,000 men aged between 18 and 60 years, and 320 women; 10,000 are unpaid volunteers but 9000 are ‘special guards’ whose salaries from protecting banks, restaurants and the like are tithed. Vigilantes, who must buy their own red uniforms, join ‘to protect others, save life, save property, save the future’ according to the Kano State commander, Alhaji Kamselem Mohammad (interview, Alhaji Kamselem Mohammad, Kano State commander, Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Hotoro, 14 January 2011).¹²

Applicants, who must fill out a four-page form requiring references, are theoretically subject to a police check, and the 60 per cent that pass are given operational guidelines and drill training by the police, and register at police posts before going out on their (mainly night) shifts. Nevertheless, the group’s aims and objectives are framed in relation to the police, thus confirming the NPF’s dominant role while rebutting its performance and effectiveness:

To assist the Police and other law enforcement agencies to curb crime; To protect and preserve public property; Assist the Police in crowd control and maintenance of peace at public functions when the need arises … to give information to the police. (Vigilante Group, 1999: 1)

Vigilantes rely on the NPF for everything beyond the routine. They carry routinely only a korkara (a long wooden stick that costs them N500), and cannot enter houses (only police can obtain search warrants), but they arrest suspects on the basis of section 313 of the constitution, which permits citizen’s arrests: the entrance hall of Hotoro’s headquarters displays photos of approximately 20 wanted or captured criminals with tokens of their crimes (drug dealing, armed robbery, livestock theft and chicken killing). Of the 943 arrests made in 2009, 899 cases were taken to the police, 96 went to court proceedings and 10 were abandoned (forms are filled out so records are available). A further 388 cases were taken to organizations such as immigration. In 2010, 34 cases were pending.

Contestation

Hisba has the highest profile of Kano’s policing groups, and is currently an important actor by virtue of its religious significance, access to state decision makers and popularity as a provider of quick and affordable justice. Its role and import may yet prove temporary, but for now it cannot be dismissed (compare Vanguard, 2011).

In 2006, IG Ehindero accused Kano State authorities of trying to make Hisba a parallel police, but this has not happened. Indeed, in 2010 the Director General of the Hisba Board, Dr Sa’id Ahmad Dukawa, insisted that Hisba ‘supervises’, rather than polices (interview, Dr Sa’id Ahmad Dukawa, Hisba director general, Kano, 1 December 2010). However, while Hisba’s community interests mean that it works amicably with the NDLEA and the Human Trafficking Agency, its relations with the NPF are often strained. Disagreement typically focuses on alcohol, as when in 2009 Hisba’s legal director reportedly claimed that Hisba had authority to operate throughout the state whereas other commentators argued that ‘the federal constitution, which permits the sale of alcohol, has priority’ over Hisba’s mandate (USSD, 2009; compare Olaniyi, 2009). Public perceptions are evident from a newspaper report that in December 2010 a police patrol failed to stop ‘Islamic policemen’ destroying lorries carrying soft drinks because of past conflict ‘between the two law enforcement agencies’ (Leadership, 2010a).

But regardless of whether relations are cordial or, as Dr Dukawa described them, ‘frosty’ (Daily Trust, 2010c), influential NPF and Hisba officers know where the boundaries between the two organizations are non-negotiable and where there is room for manoeuvre. Further, although Hisba is less significant in nearby towns such as Wudil, let alone in other Shari’a states, the NPF knows that for now coexistence is necessary. When Mohammed visited the Hisba Board as part of his familiarization tour, he said that the NPF is willing to partner Hisba in combating crime and making the state a peaceful place: ‘I want to see Hisbah and the police working together, going for patrols together and doing all other things in harmony for a more secure Kano State’ (Daily Trust, 2010c). He recognized that while:

the constitution has mandated the federal government to enact laws for the country … states and local governments are also empowered to come up with laws that is [sic] in conformity with the culture of the people. … Given this, Hisbah is a lawful agency.

Nevertheless, he warned against excess in the pursuit of Islam.

In his response, Dr Dukawa described the commissioner’s visit as a milestone towards solving ‘the problem’ between the police and Hisba. But tensions remain. Non-Muslin officers are not trained to enforce Shari’a, for which they may see no need, while different funding ensures that there is no sharing of resources; the NPF’s funding is federal while Hisba’s comes from the state government. Critically, the federal state retains its coercive authority in that the NPF is backed by the PMF, army and the SSS even as Kano State government sponsors Hisba; the federal state is the formal guarantor of the public interest even though Kano’s Islamic nature allows state authorities to claim a similar role.

In other words, Kano has a mixed system that is defined in relation to the NPF. It is not a ‘fluid interpenetration of additional and residual security in which forms of state, municipal, private and voluntary policing coalesce in a mixed economy’ (Crawford, 2006: 111) so much as a series of activities and groups that are defined by reference to the NPF. The NPF is the secular outsider in an Islamic environment, but it is an outsider that is able to operate across Kano’s various vested interests.

Conclusions

This article shows that Kano’s fragmentation of provision has not resulted in partnerships, let alone a fundamentally reconfigured field of policing; not only are the roles of Hisba and the vigilantes understood in relation to the NPF, but the NPF’s core position is reinforced by the PMF, army and the SSS. Even so, the NPF pursues a pragmatic and proactive style of policing which facilitates a locally appropriate form of community-based policing. This is made possible by Kano’s relative stability, by the pragmatism and political skills of senior figures in the groups concerned, and by the NPF’s access to knowledge collected by the intelligence networks of the Emirate and the SSS.

Policing in Kano concerns co-existence, rather than partnership. While the NPF exploits the ability of Kano’s web of authorities to deal with conflicting interests because it makes for effective policing, its approach does not include interventions that promote democratic-style community-based partnerships, let alone interventions supporting a culture of toleration and understanding. And even now community security is affected primarily by crime, politics and contingencies, rather than exclusion or extremism. Addressing structural violence and injustice may be necessary for enhancing Nigeria’s long-term capacity to reduce or prevent insecurity, but most people want immediate results. Hence the popularity of Yaki-style operations over democratic-style partnerships.

In summary, the basis for Kano’s policing arrangements are to be found in the character of its social and political organization, its place within the federal system and the political and cultural legitimating choices that have been made in relation to it. The NPF’s style of policing reflects the clarity attached to its remit, the ambiguities of institutional and local politics and the functionally determined and contingent decisions of its senior officers. Policing in Kano emphasizes the need for clarity of purpose, actionable intelligence, robust operations and pragmatic working relationships based on known boundaries, rather than partnership.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, reference RES-00-22-4030. Thanks are due to Aminu Dukku, Issa Sadiq Radda, the University of Cambridge’s Radzinowicz Library and Criminology & Criminal Justice reviewers.

Notes

Author biography

Alice Hills is professor of conflict and security at the University of Leeds where she specializes in sub-state security and police development in sub-Saharan Africa.

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