Majority of Nigerian police stations do not have their geo-locations accessible; Station distribution is inadequate across regions; either too many stations in a relatively safe locale or the opposite; Current realities question the Nigeria Police Force’s strategy for establishing stations, surveillance-based or just guess-work; This strategy-less approach has seen law enforcement stretched thing in areas like Jos South Local Government Area in Plateau state; In all, Nigeria’s Security Agencies need to start employing location intelligence to stay ahead of the insecurity curve.
A case for geo-location intelligence, a Dataphye analysis, shows the areas of emphasis to turn around Nigeria’s security apparatus’s daunting outlook.
Earlier, Dataphyte showed how Nigeria’s security agencies in several instances worsened insecurity. In contrast to their onus, they carried out extrajudicial killings on numerous accounts. Most recent being the controversial involvement of the Nigerian military in the Lekki Massacre.
On another front, Nigeria continues to battle instances of banditry, kidnappings and terrorism. Data by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) data pinpointed unidentified assailants as the perpetrators of most attacks in 2020.
The Case for Geo-Location Intelligence
With all of this, Nigeria’s security agencies have their work cut out. But has previous strategies worked, was there even a strategy? So far, reports point to the contrary, with most of the operations of security agencies labelled as mostly reactionary. This outlook could change, however, if Nigeria employed geolocation intelligence.
Last year, a Dataphyte analysis outlining the threat kidnapping posed in Nigeria, posited intelligence-based security initiatives were the way forward. Today, Dataphyte outlines the benefits of geo-location intelligence as a step in the right direction for Nigeria’s security apparatus.
First, utilising geo-location lends security personnel higher ground- literally, allowing them to efficiently and accurately detect hotspots for criminal activity. In essence, this intelligence removes the guesswork and gives room for preemptive endeavours. More so, the data gathered would further advice security officials on staffing and positioning of its teams and stations. Having identified the areas with a higher frequency of disturbances, personnel can be deployed accordingly.
Establishing Police Stations: Surveillance or Guesswork?
Dataphyte’s geo-location analysis of police stations vis-à-vis violent incidents hinted at a few problems.
First, a majority of Nigerian police stations do not have their geo-locations accessible. Besides the apparent hindrance to security analysis, this discrepancy also limits citizens access to such services.
Similarly, there appears to be a mismatch between areas with incident rates of violence and the number of police stations available. In essence, station distribution is inadequate across regions; either too many stations in a relatively safe locale or the opposite. An example is the Saki and Isehin area in Oyo state, a low-incident zone with over seven police stations.
Worse still, geo-location is unavailable for regions with high incident rates of violence or altercations. However, it was not in every instance; but still alarming no less. Even more curious are what strategies the Nigerian Police Force employs in establishing a station at any given locale. Is it survey-based or just guesswork?
High incident rates- four culprits
Amid insufficient geolocation data, Dataphyte still managed to map the four main hotspots for altercations in the country. They are Jos South, Jos North, Barkin Ladi and Shendam Local Government Area (LGA), all in Plateau state.
In particular, Jos South LGA is a ticking time bomb as a significantly high number of facilities have been recorded in recent years. An area of 453.764 square kilometres and a population of 417,813 people (according to NBS) has only two police stations.
Jos South LGA situation is almost similar to the Lagos State dilemma where for every police station, there are over 100,000 residents to be secured. The security facility is being overstretched, i.e. one police station is to oversee over 200,000 people. In an article by Premium Times, the former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, urged the Nigerian government to recruit 31,000 police officers annually for five years to ensure effective policing across the country. A senior police officer who chooses to be anonymous said, “We have a small number of policemen in this command. I think the force should recruit more personnel because we are not enough and the work is killing us.”
The situation is the same for Barkin Ladi and Shendam LGA, where law enforcement officers have their work cut out for them. In all, establishing police stations in high incident areas will prove useful.
For Jos North LGA its challenge is not a capacity inadequacy but position problem. From the diagram, it’s clear to see the cluster of stations, without regard to survey intelligence; as such, you get high incident areas ignored, and low incident areas “overpoliced.” A more effective way is to strategically position these stations within a touching distance of every corner of the LGA since there’s a high number of police stations.
Overall, to effectively curb these violent events, the Nigeria Police Force should start employing the use of geo-location intelligence. Instead of establishing the stations in random locations, better use of the resource is to station them in these hotspots.