A public affairs analyst and former Chairman of Ovia South West Local Government Area of Edo State, Destiny Enabulele, has linked the rising incidence of insecurity and criminality in Nigeria to the weakening of local governance across the country.
Enabulele made the submission while presenting a paper titled, “Local Governance for Safer Communities: Reclaiming the Grassroots as the First Line of Defence,” at the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
He argued that effective crime prevention must begin at the grassroots, stressing that communities could not be made safe through centralised policing and military interventions alone.
According to him, “Crime does not start at the national level; it starts in the street, the compound, the ward, and the local government.”
Enabulele, who is also Lead Director of the Cradle of Black Civilization Initiative and a full member of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, said decades of centralised approaches to crime prevention had weakened community-level mechanisms for preventing and resolving conflicts.
He said, “The safest societies in the world are not those with the largest armies or the harshest punishments. They are those with the most functional local governments.”
The former council chairman said although local governments were constitutionally recognised under Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution, their capacity to deliver basic services and participate effectively in crime prevention had been undermined by political and financial constraints.
He specifically cited the State Joint Local Government Account, the appointment of caretaker committees and the politicisation of community policing as factors limiting the effectiveness of local councils.
“When local governance fails, insecurity fills the vacuum. The gun replaces the gavel, and the gang replaces the council,” he said.
On banditry and other forms of organised crime, Enabulele argued that the absence of effective local institutions had created spaces where criminal networks could operate with limited community-level oversight.
“What we call banditry in Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger is not mere criminality; it is governance failure,” he said.
He added that illegal mining and oil theft also demonstrated the consequences of weak local resource governance, arguing that local communities should have greater roles in monitoring and managing resources within their jurisdictions.
On the criminal justice system, Enabulele said the weakening of trusted local mechanisms for reporting and resolving disputes had contributed to the growth of vigilante justice and other informal responses to crime.
“When citizens cannot report crime to a trusted local council or community police, they resort to vigilantes and jungle justice,” he said.
He also criticised what he described as excessive reliance on centralised paramilitary and law enforcement agencies, arguing that such institutions could become overstretched when they were expected to handle problems that could be addressed through community-based prevention.
Enabulele further linked unemployment, poor infrastructure and inadequate social services at the local level to criminality among young people.
“A local government that cannot create jobs, maintain schools, repair roads, or manage waste is manufacturing criminals,” he said.
He described poverty reduction and local economic development as important components of crime prevention, saying, “Crime prevention is not just about policing crime; it is about governing poverty.”
The public affairs analyst cited community-based approaches in Rwanda, Colombia and Japan as examples of how local institutions could contribute to safer communities.
He said lessons from the experiences of Kigali, Medellin and Japan showed that local participation, community policing, social investment and accessible dispute-resolution mechanisms could strengthen public safety.
“The lesson is simple: Safety is built locally, not imported nationally,” he said.
Presenting his recommendations to the congress, Enabulele called for greater financial and political autonomy for local governments, backed by transparent auditing and accountability mechanisms.
He also proposed the establishment of statutory local crime prevention councils comprising traditional rulers, women and youth representatives, religious leaders, persons with disabilities and police officers.
According to him, such councils should hold regular security town hall meetings where residents could openly discuss emerging threats and collaborate with security agencies.
He further advocated community-based crime data collection and ward-level crime mapping to enable authorities to identify emerging security threats, including banditry, illegal mining and gender-based violence.
On economic inclusion, Enabulele called for the formalisation of artisanal mining and stronger local participation in natural resource governance, arguing that such measures could weaken criminal networks exploiting informal economies.
Concluding his presentation, he urged governments and international organisations to move beyond rhetoric on community policing and strengthen local governance as a core component of crime prevention.
“We cannot police our way out of crime if we cannot govern our way into safety,” he said.
According to him, “National armies fight crime after it happens; local governance prevents it before it starts.”
He added, “Safer communities will not be built in New York, Geneva, or Abu Dhabi. They will be built in the local council, in the ward, in the street.”
“Let us return power to where crime begins, so that safety can begin there too,” he said.
