Analysis of the Prevalence and Distribution of Crimes Across Nigeria
Crime is a group of activities that leads to offenses. Crimes within all societies are defined by the law and punishable under the law.
Nigeria within the past decade has been on the receiving end of a rising trend in various forms of criminal activities and conflicts. In most countries around the world that are experiencing extreme violence and high crime rate — for example, Afghanistan and Colombia — extreme conflicts have always been the driver of organized crime, but this is not the case in Nigeria.
Although before 2018, the activities of the dangerous Fulani group have been confined to the middle-belt region of Nigeria, they have subsequently within the last two years advanced into the southern region of the country. Other than that, the other two active conflicts — Boko Haram terrorists and Niger Delta militant group — have been confined to both the north-east and south-south regions respectively over the years. It is also important to note that within the last two years, banditry activities have gained traction in the northwestern region of Nigeria.
Today, we will just take a brief look at the crime statistics data released by the Nigeria Bureau of statistics in 2014 to understand the trend of criminal activities in Nigeria before 2015, the current benchmark for recent developments in Nigeria.
For a start, we will look at the chart that displays the total number of people convicted for each crime in Nigeria annually over a period of 5 years, 2007 to 2011.
Just as expected, the most prevalent crimes are stealing and armed robbery. This is not surprising as the country’s economy over time has been unable to adequately provide its citizens with the necessities to survive, so we have citizens and residents taking the law into their own hands and fending for themselves.
The third most prevalent crime across the 5 years is murder, we can see from the chart that the trend of murder either expands or contracts with armed robbery. If the number of people convicted for armed robbery drops, the number of people convicted for murder also drops. This implicitly implies that most murders occur during armed robberies either as a means of protecting their identities or an opportunity to display power over their victims.
Another thing that is also worthy of note from the chart is the fact that the number of people convicted for migration crimes consistently increased from 2007 to 2011. Over the years, we have seen several countries, particularly European countries, make pacts that saw the deportation of several Nigerians. Although this trend has continually soared, yet it has not deterred a lot of Nigerians from seeking greener pastures abroad. The crime is not the search for a better life in Europe, but in doing so via illegal means. Nigerians constantly break migration laws and emigrate via illegal routes, all in the bid to secure a better life.
We could also see that the growth of migration crimes is directly proportional to smuggling crimes. This is not surprising, as most immigration crimes in Nigeria comprise of the importation of contrabands or legally approved commodities through illegal routes. On the same terrain, except for 2007, we could see that the increase in the number of people convicted for migration offenses also moves along the same direction as the number of people convicted for human trafficking.
Another fact from the chart is that all through the five-year period, there were no convictions for treason in Nigeria.
Chart 2, as displayed above, highlights the total number of prisoners in Nigeria by state. We could see from the chart above that Lagos state is the home to most of the prisoners in Nigeria. Lagos is followed by Rivers state, which is also followed closely by Kano and Kaduna states. This is not surprising, because these states are all within the first six most populous states in Nigeria, satisfying the hypothesis that property and violent crimes are moderately correlated with a high population. The states with the least crime rates — Ekiti, Kogi, Kwara, and Osun — although not the least in terms of population in Nigeria are some of the least economically vibrant states in Nigeria. Implying that high crime rates are not only associated with a high population.
The third chart shown below describes to what extent prisons are overpopulated in all the states across Nigeria.
Just as we could have guessed, Lagos state and Rivers state tops the list of states with overpopulated prisons. We can see from these charts, both for 2010 and 2011, that these two states have a prison population that is about 100% more than the prison capacities in those states. This is of course followed closely by Kano, Ogun, Enugu, and Imo states. Although Kaduna state is featured in the list of the states with the highest number of prisoners, the total number of prisoners in the state is just about 50% shy of the maximum capacity in 2011 and 20% shy in 2010. Also worthy of note is that all the south-eastern states have overpopulated prisons.
Of the 36 states in Nigeria, just about 50% have prisons that are not overpopulated. This indicates high negligence of the welfare of prisoners in Nigeria.
The chart above shows the number of prisoners in Nigeria according to their category of incarceration. There are five categories of people occupying the Nigerian prisons; the “Condemned” are those that have been sentenced to death by the court, the “Detainees” are those that have been arrested by security officials over perceived offenses, the “Long term” are those who have been sentenced to long term imprisonment, the “Short term” are those sentenced to short term imprisonment, the “Remand/awaiting” trial are mostly those whose case is before the court but has not been finalized, and finally “Others” refers to those whose category of incarceration could not be determined.
The Nigerian prisons are mostly populated by individuals who have neither been proven guilty or innocent, being subjected to the same life as those who have been proven guilty as shown by the chart. The numbers of prisoners condemned to death are very small, indicating that the Nigerian legal system does not consistently deliver the death penalty as widely perceived. The outlier that is seen under the others’ category could most likely be a result of data collection error as the possibility of having that percentage of uncategorized prisoners is nearly impossible.
Finally, we’ll investigate how petitions were handled between 2007 and 2011 within the Nigerian legal system, especially as it pertains to prisons and prisoners.
We can see from this chart that just as we had expected, the number of petitions under-investigated is about 100% more than the petitions either fully investigated or rejected for lack of jurisdiction. This further ascertains the notion that Nigerian security operatives are not very efficient in executing their responsibilities.
So far, we have seen that migration crimes are closely related to human trafficking and smuggling and the same correlation holds for murder and armed robbery. We also saw that about 50% of Nigerian states have overpopulated prisons and that Lagos state, Rivers state, Kano state, and Kaduna state top the list of states with the highest amount of prisoners in Nigeria. The analysis further showed us that Nigerian prisons are dominated by those who have been remanded there by the courts until proven guilty or innocent, subjecting them to the same conditions as those who have been proven guilty. And finally, we saw that the number of petitions under-investigated by the Nigerian security operatives is about 100% more than the number of petitions either fully investigated or rejected for lack of jurisdiction.
This analysis covers data from 2007 through 2012. And the data was mined from the website of the Nigerian bureau of statistics. The codes used for this analysis can be found in my GitHub repository here.
