IN A sweaty restaurant in Lagos, Ajayi Oluwatosin David, a member of a government-affiliated paramilitary group, displays a picture on his cell phone of three alleged kidnappers lying naked before the feet of a crowd.
A day earlier, security guards had caught the trio, stripped them, taken photographs and turned them over to the police. Had Mr David’s colleagues not been on the scene, the mob might have beaten the suspects, wrapped them in petrol-soaked car tyres and set them ablaze. That is what happened in April to a robber caught stealing a television in a slum in Nigeria’s commercial capital.
Vigilante killings of suspected criminals happen often enough in Nigeria that they have their own moniker: jungle justice. Some are the result of hasty verdicts and mistaken identities: in 2012 four college students were wrongly accused of theft and killed by riled-up neighbours near the southern city of Port Harcourt.
Policemen and politicians condemn these and other killings, and the Nigerian senate is considering a bill aimed at cracking down on mob justice. But experts say they go on because crime is rampant and many people do not trust the law. Security firms say Nigeria is Africa’s kidnap capital and that policemen are often involved.The feeling is that by handing this suspect over to the police, the police will release them and collect money from them,” says Innocent Chukwuma, a public safety and security expert. There is some truth to this: Nigerian law does allow certain criminal suspects to post bail, and the police are staggeringly corrupt. Many officers spend their days mounting roadblocks to extort cash from drivers. People who report a crime are often told to pay up or the cops won’t investigate it.
Aware of its poor reputation, in 2015 Nigeria’s constabulary put together a unit to probe complaints against officers. Thus far none of the grievances reported to it has been resolved, says Okey Nwanguma of the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria, a pressure group. “People don’t have confidence in the police so they prefer to take laws into their own hands and dispense mob justice,” says Mr Nwanguma.
When they do, there is usually someone nearby with a camera to record the macabre episode. In October, for instance, horrific photographs circulated on social media showing a beaten and bloody suspect hogtied and suspended from a beam in Benin City, east of Lagos. Other photographs doing the rounds in recent months show people being burned alive after being accused of crimes ranging from rape to the theft of a television.
Mr David’s security organisation, called Man ‘O’ War, patrols markets and neighbourhoods in Nigeria and detains suspected criminals before handing them over to the police. He says it is essential to strip and photograph suspects so that people will recognise them if they return. Beatings by bystanders are also justified, in his view. “The civilians have the right to beat a criminal if they caught [him], because he’ll be struggling,” Mr David says. But the public has no right to kill suspects, he says.
When they do, there is usually someone nearby with a camera to record the macabre episode. In October, for instance, horrific photographs circulated on social media showing a beaten and bloody suspect hogtied and suspended from a beam in Benin City, east of Lagos. Other photographs doing the rounds in recent months show people being burned alive after being accused of crimes ranging from rape to the theft of a television.
Mr David’s security organisation, called Man ‘O’ War, patrols markets and neighbourhoods in Nigeria and detains suspected criminals before handing them over to the police. He says it is essential to strip and photograph suspects so that people will recognise them if they return. Beatings by bystanders are also justified, in his view. “The civilians have the right to beat a criminal if they caught [him], because he’ll be struggling,” Mr David says. But the public has no right to kill suspects, he says.
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