By Prof. Chiwuike Uba, PhD
There are mornings in Nigeria when the news breaks like a wound. A community awakens to yet another night attack, yet another farm invaded, yet another commuter robbed on a familiar road that should have been safe. Often, when survivors speak, they describe the same pattern. The police arrived hours late. The officers who came did not know the terrain. They did not speak the language. They had no relationships with the community, no familiarity with previous threats, no deep understanding of the tension lines simmering beneath the surface. In the end, they collected statements, made promises, and left. The criminals, however, remained embedded in the unspoken knowledge of the community they had terrorized. This story is not an exception; it is Nigeria’s recurring security tragedy.
If security begins at the level of familiarity and not force, then Nigeria’s centralized, externally posted policing model is fundamentally misaligned with reality. A police officer who cannot speak the language of the people cannot speak to their fears. A security system dominated by non-indigenes will struggle to earn trust, gather intelligence, or respond with context-sensitive accuracy. This disconnect has grown into one of the most profound, yet least addressed, contributors to Nigeria’s worsening insecurity.
Community policing, properly understood, goes far beyond stationing officers in communities. It means aligning policing with local knowledge, cultural fluency, shared ownership, and trust-building. It means creating a system where officers are not strangers in the places they serve, but members of the social fabric. It is this deeper version of community policing, anchored on indigenous participation, that offers Nigeria a historic opportunity to rebuild security from the ground up. The idea that at least seventy-five percent of officers deployed to a state, local government, or community should be indigenes is not a sentimental argument; it is a strategic necessity born from decades of systemic failure.
Nigeria’s current policing model places officers in areas where they lack cultural knowledge, historical context, or a sense of belonging. When an officer has no roots in a community, accountability weakens. When officers are posted from faraway regions, and often rotated swiftly, they treat communities as temporary assignments instead of places whose safety is tied to their own dignity, family, and future. This detachment contributes to extortion, repression, excessive force, and a transactional approach to policing. Worse still, the presence of officers who share ethnic backgrounds with cross-border criminal networks has, in some cases, created pathways through which arrested criminals are quietly shielded, released, or warned ahead of enforcement actions. Communities across the southern states have repeatedly narrated experiences in which violent offenders of external origin were released through the backdoors of policing units. These are not isolated events; they reveal a structural flaw.
In this context, it is important to commend the President of Nigeria for the recent directive to withdraw police officers attached to VIPs. This move is a positive step toward refocusing policing on communities and public safety rather than personal protection for individuals. Such redeployment has the potential to release hundreds of officers back into communities where they are desperately needed, thereby strengthening indigenous policing. However, past directives on similar issues have often been ignored or only partially implemented. There is an urgent need to ensure that this latest presidential order is fully enforced across the country so that officers can be redeployed without obstruction, and communities can genuinely benefit from their presence.
The argument for indigenous policing is strengthened when global examples are considered. Rwanda’s community policing transformation stands as one of Africa’s most successful modern security reforms. Local officers, recruited from within communities, not only reduced crime but also built a surveillance network rooted in trust and mutual responsibility. Japan’s Kōban system shows how small neighborhood-based policing structures, staffed by officers who live among the people, create some of the lowest crime rates in the world. Kenya’s Nyumba Kumi initiative demonstrates that security improves dramatically when communities and security agents share information through culturally grounded networks. Scandinavian countries have perfected neighborhood policing where officers learn the language, social dynamics, and emotional rhythms of the communities they protect. In each of these cases, one principle stands firm: policing is most effective when rooted in the soil of local knowledge.
Nigeria’s own experience validates this truth. The success of the Civilian Joint Task Force in the northeast was not driven by superior weapons or larger numbers, but by intimate knowledge of local terrain, clan networks, and insurgent movement patterns. Amotekun in the southwest has demonstrated how cultural familiarity and linguistic fluency can disrupt criminal operations more effectively than conventional units. Even in rural communities battling banditry, farmers and hunters often provide more actionable intelligence than formal policing structures. These examples are signals of what Nigeria could achieve with a deliberate, institutionalized form of indigenous community policing.
Data reinforces the urgency. Different surveys show that the Nigeria Police Force ranks among the least trusted institutions in the country. Trust is a currency without which policing cannot function. The officer-to-citizen ratio in Nigeria is far below the United Nations recommendation, and even the officers available are overstretched by deployments that ignore community ties and local expertise. Average police response times in rural areas are devastatingly slow. Communities, feeling abandoned, increasingly rely on self-help security arrangements. The consequences are predictable: rising vigilantism, proliferation of arms, and a widening gap between citizens and state institutions.
To complement redeployment and indigenous policing, it is imperative to provide proper incentives for Nigerian police officers. Many of the systemic problems associated with corruption, extortion, and misconduct are linked to inadequate remuneration, poor welfare, lack of career progression, and unsafe working conditions. Officers who are motivated, fairly compensated, and recognized for their service are far less likely to engage in criminal behavior. Investing in salaries, housing, medical care, pensions, and career development is not a luxury; it is a critical strategy to align officers’ personal interests with public safety. Proper incentives create a culture of professionalism, loyalty, and commitment to community protection, reinforcing the goals of indigenous policing.
Community policing rooted in indigenous participation offers a pathway out of this crisis by rebuilding the legitimacy of the police. When officers are members of the community, intelligence flows freely. People report crimes without fear. Officers pursue criminals with deeper commitment because the victims are not strangers. Crime prevention becomes communal, not confrontational. Trust grows slowly, but it grows surely. And trust, once rebuilt, becomes a force multiplier stronger than any weapon or patrol vehicle.
Operationalizing indigenous community policing requires more than recruitment. It demands a phased, strategic, and well-funded plan. The first step is a personnel audit to determine current deployment patterns, skills, and cultural alignments. Recruitment must be transparent, competitive, and merit-based, ensuring that indigeneity does not replace competence but enhances it. Training must be modern, emphasizing psychology, conflict resolution, intelligence gathering, ethics, technology use, and human rights. Officers should rotate within local governments rather than across states, preventing over-familiarity that may lead to local capture while preserving cultural continuity. Senior officers from outside the state can remain in supervisory or neutral oversight roles to balance interests and reduce risks of ethnic bias.
Funding is critical. Community policing should be financed through a hybrid model involving federal allocations, state contributions, and grants from development partners who have long supported security-sector reforms. The cost implications include training, recruitment, community liaison units, technology deployment, monitoring systems, and continuous capacity-building. While the costs may be substantial, the cost of insecurity, including lost investments, destroyed livelihoods, displaced populations, and stunted development, is far greater.
Legal reforms are also essential. The Police Act may require amendments to define community policing structures, indigenous deployment requirements, oversight councils, and channels for grievance redress. Each state should establish Community Policing Boards comprising traditional rulers, religious leaders, civil society groups, youth representatives, women’s associations, and security officials. These boards would oversee recruitment integrity, performance monitoring, and dispute mediation. Digital monitoring tools, such as body cameras, dashboard logs, and performance dashboards, can reduce abuses and enhance transparency.
There are legitimate concerns about the risks of indigenous policing. Critics fear that local officers may be biased, captured by local elites, or influenced by ethnic loyalties. These risks are real but manageable. Strong oversight, clear disciplinary mechanisms, rotation within local governments, and supervision by neutral external officers can guard against abuse. With proper checks, indigenous policing becomes not a threat but a stabilizing force. The alternative, continuing with a system that is culturally blind, distrusted, and structurally prone to abuse, is far more dangerous.
The emotional case for indigenous community policing is as powerful as the policy logic. People feel safest when those protecting them understand their history, fears, symbols, quarrels, and customs. Security is not just the presence of armed officers; it is the presence of familiar guardians who carry the trust of the community they serve. Trust cannot be imported. It must be grown. And it grows from shared identity, shared language, shared experience, and shared destiny.
Nigeria stands at a crossroads. The old model has failed, and the consequences spill daily onto our roads, markets, farms, and homes. We live in a country where security has become a prayer point, a negotiation, and a gamble. Yet it does not have to be this way. The path toward a safer Nigeria lies in building a police system that is not only present in communities but belongs to them. A system where officers see the people they serve not as strangers, but as extensions of their own families. A system where security becomes a collective project rooted in trust and mutual responsibility.
The promise of indigenous community policing is simple but profound. When local officers serve local communities, intelligence sharpens, response times shorten, crimes decline, and trust flourishes. Security ceases to be a distant promise and becomes a lived reality. This is the Nigeria we can build, one community, one officer, and one trusted relationship at a time. At the same time, it is critical that the President’s directive on withdrawing police officers attached to VIPs be implemented fully and transparently. Past orders on this matter were never enforced effectively, and the opportunity for meaningful redeployment was lost. For the safety of all Nigerians, this directive must be realized without compromise.
About the Author
Prof. Chiwuike Uba, Ph.D., is a Nigerian economist, policy expert, and security consultant with over 25 years of experience in governance, public financial management, and international development. Prof. Uba is a frequent contributor to policy dialogues on improving governance and national security in Nigeria.