By Waziri B Adisa, Tunde A Alabi taalabi@unilag.edu.ng, and Samuel O Adejoh

Violence or its threats have been a part of many African cities since the end of the Cold War, when many African countries transitioned from military to civilian rule. While the incidence of organised crime and violent victimisation of innocent citizens is not new to many West African cities, the emergence of terrorist organisations, armed bandits, kidnappers and armed gangs in a city like Lagos has created new security challenges. The challenges include the inability of the government to cope with the rising number of young people in organised cult clashes and the threats to peace and stability in Lagos metropolis. This study is designed to investigate the influence of socio-demographic (senatorial district, gender, age, ethnic group, marital status, education, employment, duration of residency and type of apartment) and community factors (presence of nightclubs/hotels, use of private security and frequency of police patrol) on residents’ experience of crime victimisation, robbery and organised crime. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and a quantitative method of data collection. A structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from 300 respondents across three senatorial districts of Lagos State. The study found that factors such as location, type of apartment, nightclubbing, duration of residence, employment status and use of private security predicted at least one of the three dependent variables. The implications of the findings are discussed.

International Review of Victimology Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 69-91

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Transnational organized crime in the West African region must be regarded as an issue of growing concern. In order to highlight the problem, an overview of the development of the phenomenon in five countries of the region—Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone—is provided, tracing both its extent as well as the range of illicit activities that are engaged in. These are diverse and include: drug trafficking, advanced fee and Internet fraud, human trafficking, diamond smuggling, forgery, cigarette smuggling, illegal manufacture of firearms, trafficking in firearms, armed robbery and the theft and smuggling of oil. A number of challenges present themselves in providing an accurate picture of transnational organized crime in West Africa, including the difficulty of gathering reliable information on essentially hidden practices. Having regard to these, the project used consultants in each of the five countries to collect information based on detailed guidelines, including the collection of data on three criminal groups engaged in transnational activities. This, combined with a review of the available secondary literature as well as other inputs, forms the basis for the information presented. Any analysis of organized crime in the region must take into account the specific historical context and socio-economic conditions that have given rise to it. The report traces the historical development of organized crime, examining the broad socio-economic and political context that has made the region particularly vulnerable. These include: the difficult economic circumstances characteristic of the last decades, civil war, state weakness, as well as specific conditions conducive to corrupt practices. The degree to which some forms of organized criminal activity are simply accepted as normal “business” activities by their perpetrators is underscored. The report provides an explanation for the specific modes of operation of West African criminal groups, highlighting in particular their very loose and networked structures. Such structures resemble those for small legal business operations in the region, built as they are on close family and community ties. Although press reports sometimes refer to “drug barons” or “mafias” in the region there is no evidence of West African drug cartels in the sense of hierarchical, permanent and corporate-like structures.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2005. 48p