As you read through the 2007 Annual Report, you will gain an overview into the workings, successes and challenges of justice sector and police reform. You will observe how research, programmes, advocacy and publications fuel CLEEN’s multifaceted approach to working with one of the nation’s largest and most visible institutions, the Nigeria Police Force. Read more

Policing in West Africa has overtime become a mixed basket of advances, reversals and mounting challenges as a result of the numerous forms of police reform programs and initiatives introduced by individual countries in the sub region to address issues affecting the safety and security needs of their people. This compilation of proceedings of a three-day Regional Conference on Police and Policing in West Africa organized by CLEEN Foundation in December, 2006 provides an insight into problems, initiatives and strategies employed by civil society and key stakeholders in policing across the West African sub region and beyond to addressing police and policing issues with a view to developing a West Africa wide strategy to dealing with the problems.Read more

Despite the provisions of ECOWAS Treaty and the Protocol on free movement of persons and goods, freedom of movement remains difficult across West Africa. The story of what West African citizens go through at the hands of border security officials is the same – harassment, extortion, brutality, deportation, and traumatic delays in moving goods across borders, sometime lasting weeks due to countless number of security checkpoints along the border highways, many of them mounted by unauthorized officials.
The social and economic consequences of this state of affairs in terms of regional integration and trade can only be imagined.
This publication is the result of an exploratory study on monitoring the activities of law enforcement officials along West African borders that impede the full implementation of the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons and Goods by member countries. The highlights of the findings include: low level of knowledge of travelers and law enforcement officials about the provisions of the Protocol; general feeling among travelers that borders are unsafe and hostile as a result of the activities of law enforcement officials and touts; high level of disharmony in the rules applied by law enforcement agencies across borders, which reveals that the Protocol has done very little in harmonizing rules across jurisdictions; multiplicity of law enforcement agencies operating at the borders and generally low perception of cross border travelers about the level of professionalism and effectiveness of border security officials. Read more

Gender-based violence is a universal abuse of women’s human rights. Women from different continents, countries, ethnic groups, religious, cultural and social backgrounds; literate or illiterate; rich or poor; in peace time or in war, continue to suffer one form of violence or the other at the hands of the state, the community, or their own family. In various countries and continents the world over, conscious
steps are been taken to address this problem. Read book

The incidence of 8th June, 2005 where the professional misjudgement of some Police Officers led to the extra-judicial killing of six Apo Traders has further trinforced the need for a holistic and comprehensive reform of the police. The killing of the “Apo Six” was greeted with disdain, resentments and condemnation, both at local and international levels. The Apo six would have passed for the usual excuse of “shootout with armed robbers” as indeed the police had through the media labelled them armed robbers and hurriedly buried them but for the vigilance of some others who knew they were not armed robbers Read Book

The police can play positive and significant roles in the promotion of pro-poor change initiatives. But for the Nigerian police to do so the various structural, institutional and logistics obstacles highlighted in this study would have to be addressed. If these are done, police will be better placed to meet the expectation of citizens and thereby earned the cooperation of the public which they require to fulfill their mandate. Read Book

Increase in violent crime and delinquency, has become a common feature of countries in transition. The literature has attributed this development to the uncontrollable nature of change in its formative stage, demobilization or dismantling of repressive security apparatuses used by previous authoritarian regimes in controlling crime and the unequal socio-economic opportunities brought about by economic liberalization programs (Shaw, 2001; Shearing & Kempa 2001).
Nigerian experience has not been different! The first four years of transitional democracy in the country witnessed perceived and real increase in violent crime and disorder, so much so that safety and security issues ranked very high among citizens priority concerns. Public commentary on police performance in crime prevention and crime control was adverse. However, the comments dwelt very little on solutions to the crime problems and focused heavily on police deprecation.
In response to this situation, The NGO Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN) in collaboration with the Nigeria Police Force and support from the MacArthur Foundation, organized a well attended four-day National Summit on Crime and Policing in Nigeria, at the Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers, from April 26-29, 2004. Read Book

The police and other security forces have been accused of being used by politicians to carry out electoral malpractices and to harass and intimidate opponents in the history of elections in Nigeria. The loss of confidence in the police by the political opposition was so high in the second republic (1979-1983) that some candidates had to hire private security forces to serve as a counterpoise to the public service police. This perception of the police raised questions about the neutrality and preparedness of the police to guarantee the safety and security of the electorates in the 20031 elections.
In the exercise of its statutory function of formulating and implementing policies aimed at improving efficiency and discipline in the Nigeria Police Force, the Police Service Commission decided to produce guidelines for the conduct of police officers on electoral duty in Nigeria and to deploy roving monitors to observe their conduct during the 2003 elections. This publication is the final report of that exercise.
Police and Policing in Nigeria is an essential reading for anyone with an interest in police conduct during the 2003 elections. It is a highly significant report, providing the reader with a more informed understanding of the role of the police during elections. Read Book

Proceedings of a National Workshop on Civilian Oversight of Policing in Nigeria which it organised in collaboration with the Police Service Commission, Open Society Justice Initiative and the Vera Institute of Justice. The publication is a must read for all those interested in police oversight and accountability in Nigeria. Electronic version of the publication can be downloaded by clicking: Read Book

Police/Community relations in Nigeria has been characterized by acrimony, mutual suspicion and sometimes open hostility and violence. The question of policing style, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness, are among the many issues that bother not only the elite but also the ordinary men and women in the rural communities. As Nigeria begins to grapple with the challenges of building a democratic society, there is a need to cultivate an attitudinal change on relationship between the police and civil society in the country. Hence, constable Joe drama series. Read book

Nigeria’s fledgling democracy faces several challenges. Among the most complex of these challenges seems to be the stabilisation of civil military relations in such a way that promotes military professionalism and subordination to civil authority. The centrality of this issue to the survival of democracy in Nigeria, was brought home to the populace in March 2001,when General Victor Malu, the immediate past Chief of Army Staff , broke the chain of official communication and openly raised his reservation about the extend of America’s involvementin the on-going reorganisation of the Nigerian Army. Even though the issues he raised were welcomed by many Nigerians , the fact that he chose the public domain in raising a matter that should clearly have followed officially recognised channel of communication did not escape the notice of discernoble Nigerians.
Ideally, the Nigerian constitution, which was restricts the role of the military to defending the country from external aggresion and maintaining its territorial intergrity, should have been enough deterrence against the involement of the military in policy issues and governance. However, experience in the last 40 years of Nigeria’s independence has shown that civil dominance of the military, regardless of how securely grounded it may be in the constitution cannot implement itself. Like any other principle, it must be cherished in the public mind if it is to prevail.
The Obasenjo’s government has tried to deal with some of the issues that raise tension in civil military relations in Nigeria. However, a lot still needs to be done and urgently so, to consolidate democracy and stabilise civil military relations in Nigeria. It requires the contribution of institutions of civil society in Nigeria, to educate the military to adhere to their constitutional role of defending the territorial borders of the country on the one hand , and the civil populace to resist the urge to initiate or support violent overthrow of a constitutional order, on the other hand. Forward March is, therefore, the contriburion of the Center for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) in this regard. Read Book

The poor representation and status of women in the Nigeria police force have become a reference point any discourse on police transformation in Nigeria. This study analyzes gender relation and discrimination in the Nigeria police .The analysis are situated within a conceptual framework that stresses the roles of patriarchy and social relations of gender as bases for social exclusion of woman from power, wealth, status employment and other resources in society.Read Book

The last five years of elected civilian government in Nigeria have witnessed an alarming spate of violence and egregious human rights violations. In over fifty separate and documented incidents, over ten thousand Nigerians have reportedly been victims of extrajudicial executions at and average of over 200 executions per incident. Security agents, acting in most cases on direct orders of the government, have been responsible for many of the deaths as well as accompanying rapes, maiming and torture of thousands of women, the aged, children and other defenseless civilians. The International Committee of Red Cross estimates that hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced and scattered in several makeshift refugee camps without adequate food and medical supplies, and in most unhygienic and deplorable conditions. Read Book

Police –community Violence is one of the critical socio- political problems in Nigeria. Two dimension of the problem are considered in this Study. There are the use of violence against citizens and citizen’s citizen by the police and Citizen Violence against the police. Theoretically, police-community violence was analyzed within a broad framework that posits that violence by and against police are determined by social, political and economic factors mediated by police institutional ideology and capabilities. Read Book

As Nigeria begins to grapple with the challenges of an elected government, debates on the role and function of the Nigeria police force in the new dispensation have come to the fore. The Center for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) anticipated this and designed two integrated programme in 1999 to sample the opinion of the Nigeria people on the roles expected of the police in the new era. Read Book

Juvenile justice administration in Nigeria suffers from several inadequacies: Legal, policy, planning implementation, education and research. There are no well –established and adequately equipped institutions and coherent programmes for dealing with juvenile offenders and preventing juvenile delinquency in the country. The existing legislative and institutional frameworks were inherited from the colonial government. Moreover, the laws predated the evolution of contemporary international human rights standards for dealing with juvenile offenders and children at risk. As a result, many of the laws governing the treatment of juvenile offenders do not conform to these standard. Read Book

Between February 13 and 15, 1999, two of three registered political parties in Nigeria the All Peoples Party (APP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- held their national conventions. The conventions or primaries, as they are sometimes called, were organised to elect presidential candidates of the two parties for the February 27, 1999, Presidential elections. The third of the officially recognised parties – Alliance for Democracy (AD) did not organise a presidential convention, but instead opted for an arrangement through which the ‘elders’ of the party sat in secrecy and ‘elected’ a presidential candidate for the
party, Chief Olu Falae. This report therefore does not include AD’s “presidential primaries”. But it notes that the party later aligned with the APP in the presentation of Chief Olu Falae as their joint presidential candidate for the elections. Read more