Mr. Frank Tietie, Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy for Social and Economic Rights (CASER) and lawyer, has proposed a decentralized police system as a solution to Nigeria’s growing problem of jungle justice and insecurity.
Under this system, states and local governments would oversee their own policing, potentially reducing instances of jungle justice, extrajudicial killings, and other security challenges.
Tietie, a socio-political critic suggested intensifying pressure on the National Assembly to decentralize the police system.
He lamented that the federal-controlled police have been “rendered woefully incompetent and deeply entrenched in corruption.”
He said: “Mob justice has been with us for a long time. Where law enforcement agents are seen to be restricted only to capital cities or the various states or in the nation’s capital, people tend to have a sense that the government is far away and they can do whatever they like.”
Persecondnews reports that Wikipedia describes jungle justice as a form of public extrajudicial killing where alleged criminals are publicly humiliated, beaten, and summarily executed by vigilantes or angry mobs, jungle justice perpetuates a culture of violence, vigilantism, and mob mentality.
It blatantly violates fundamental human rights, including the right to life, liberty, security, fair trial, and due process, which are cornerstone principles of a just and civilized society.
This practice contravenes Sections 33, 34, and 36 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, which safeguard the rights to life, dignity, and fair hearing.
It is also an affront to international agreements, including Article 3 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which reinforce the protection of these fundamental rights.
Nigeria has had its fair share of jungle justice, from the unforgettable Aluu4 incident on October 5, 2012, where four University of Port Harcourt students lost their lives, to the killing of 74-year-old Mrs. Agbahime on June 2, 2016, in Kano, over alleged blasphemy.
Other examples include Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a second-year college student who was stoned to death on May 12, 2022, by a mob of Muslim students over false blasphemy accusations, and Jefry Akro, a 22-year-old university student in Oyo State, who died from injuries sustained during a brutal assault by peers who falsely accused him of theft.
A recent incident occurred in the Udune Efandion community of Uromi, Edo state on March 28, 2025, where 16 Northern hunters traveling from Rivers to Kano for Sallah festivities were killed by a mob that accused them of kidnapping.
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