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GOVERNMENT PROPERTIES: THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE AS TOTAL INSTITUTION?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2016

Olly Owen
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Abstract

This article looks at the relationships between Nigerian police officers and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in which they serve. Against simplistic portraits of police institutions as mechanistic agents of governmental power, the article looks inside one such institution to examine how it exercises power over its own personnel, in a totalizing institutional project which combines duty and identity within a hierarchical and paramilitarized structure. Police officers are caught between their embodying of state authority and their lack of authority within their own institution. At the same time, it depicts individual officers' attempts to navigate this structure to their own advantage, creating a counter-current within the institutional world. Both ultimately affect the way in which the NPF exercises its powers within wider society. According to this perspective, the violence and corruption, negligence and evasion that often typify interactions with the police may be less signs of police officers' power than of their attempts to cope with the lack of it.

Résumé

Cet article étudie les relations entre les policiers nigérians et la police nigériane (NPF, de l'anglais Nigeria Police Force) dans laquelle ils servent. En contraste avec les portraits simplistes des institutions de police comme agents du mécanisme du pouvoir gouvernemental, cet article examine une de ces institutions de l'intérieur pour étudier comment elle exerce le pouvoir sur son propre personnel, dans un projet institutionnel de totalisation qui allie responsabilité et identité au sein d'une structure hiérarchique paramilitarisée. Les policiers sont pris entre leur incarnation de l'autorité de l’État et leur manque d'autorité au sein de leur propre institution. Dans le même temps, l'article décrit les tentatives de certains policiers de composer avec cette structure à leur propre avantage, en créant un contre-courant au sein de l'univers institutionnel. Tous deux affectent en définitive la manière dont la NPF exerce ses pouvoirs au sein de la société. Selon cette perspective, la violence, la corruption, la négligence et l’évitement qui typifient souvent les interactions avec la police peuvent être moins des signes du pouvoir des policiers que des signes de leurs tentatives de pallier un manque de pouvoir.

Type
Law and Social Order in Africa
Information
Africa , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 37 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2016 

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References

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