Dynamics of Police Extortions on the Nigerian Highways
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Date
2018-03
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Department of Sociology, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Abstract
The Nigeria Police as an agent of social control provide social services to the general public and enforces law and order. The Nigeria Police occupy various locations especially on the highways where the officers check vehicles and drivers in relation to their duty of prevention and detection of crime. They often deviate from their constitutional functions by collecting bribes from the motorists especially on the highways with impunity and pretentiousness. Thus, rather than aiding security and the apprehension of criminals on the highways, police checkpoints in Nigeria have become an avenues for unnecessary delay of motorists and commuters in the quest by the police officers to extort money from them, even as criminals make the best of such scenarios to pay the necessary toll and evade apprehension. It has become worrisome that a very arm of the government that supposed to enforce the law is the same breaking it. It is against this backdrop that this paper explores the factors influencing the exchange of bribery between police and commercial drivers. The study adopts social exchange and rational choice theories and the paper revealed that many commercial drivers were short-changed, intimidated, delayed and extorted and thus recommended that Nigeria police deserves an improved working condition cultural reorientation and other personnel practices to reduce highway extortion.
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Keywords
Nigeria Police Force, extortion, highways, commercial drivers, traffic rules