Abstract
This paper analyzes the impact of poverty on social crime in urban areas in Nigeria. It attempts to link the spread of urban crime to three important variables. These are bad governance, poverty, and inequality. The choice of Nigeria as the case study is informed by several considerations. The first and the most important is that it has been always assumed that democracy promotes good governance and social equality; the two components that are necessary for addressing urban crime. Nigeria’s failure in this regard provides an interesting lesson through which the phenomenon of urban crime can be studied, its causes analyzed, and its effects revealed. The period covered is between 1999 when democracy was restored to the present. In the final analysis it is shown that bad governance, poverty, and social inequality are responsible for the spread of urban crime in the country over the last twelve years.
Keywords: Nigeria, Poverty, Crime, Inequality, Bad Governance, Democracy, Violence.
Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999 brought a number of expectations among the people (Maier,
2000). Years of military rule, political instability, policy reversals, weak economic growth, and endemic corruption have entrenched within the country alarming levels of poverty, inequality, and alienation among vast majority of its citizens. The return of democratic rule in the country, quite naturally, generated euphoria and great expectations, especially among those who felt alienated and disenfranchised. Looking at how many countries that were democratic were doing in terms of economic development, one would understand why millions of Nigerians had pinned their hopes for development and justice on democracy. Democracy, it is generally agreed, promotes stability and accountability in the political system (Yagboayaju, 2011). These two elements have been universally recognized as indispensable to economic development and by extension elimination of poverty and inequality in the political system (Ringen, 2004; Dellapiane-Avellaneda, 2009). Looking back twelve years after democratization in Nigeria, one would be tempted to wonder whether those expectations were after all misplaced. For indeed, twelve years into democratic rule, economic growth continue to be stunted, distribution of wealth remained uneven, and political stability elusive. In simple language, in the last twelve years, the levels of poverty, unemployment, and inequality have steadily increased especially in the urban areas (Ucha, 2010).
Parallel to this development is the corresponding explosion in crime, especially its urban variant, which include prostitution, drug peddling, armed robbery, kidnappings, human trafficking, militancy, thuggery, hooliganism, youth violence, and even terrorism. While many of these social problems have been very much part of the Nigeria’s socio political landscape, two important observations are in order at this point. The first observation is that some of these problems such as human trafficking and kidnappings are recent developments. The second observation to be made here is that even those problems that have for long been part of Nigeria’s urban landscape such as prostitution, drug peddling and armed robbery; their intensity has multiplied many folds since 1999 when Nigeria democratized. What are the possible explanations for the rise of urban crime in Nigeria; what are the factors and or conditions that facilitate the rising level of urban crime in Nigerian cities?