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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how some vigilante groups, such as Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) and Vigilante Group of Nigeria (VGN) in the megalopolis of Lagos, step in to fill a significant security and governance vacuums left by the state in the local communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how some vigilante groups, such as Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) and Vigilante Group of Nigeria (VGN) in the megalopolis of Lagos, step in to fill a significant security and governance vacuums left by the state in the local communities. As the second largest city in the African continent, Lagos has been bedeviled with multiple urban problems and contradictions that range from extreme inequality to poverty, sprawling informal settlements, and weak investment in internal security by the government, which have created a fertile breeding ground for crime and criminal gangs. The social ecology of crime expands at the most desperate urban margins, leading to drug abuse, petty theft, extortion, and serious crimes, such as armed robbery and kidnapping. In this environment, the work of vigilantes goes beyond security provision to an array of services for local communities. Vigilantes settle disputes between neighbors; resolve issues related to domestic violence, public sanitation, public road repair, and drainage; and discipline delinquent children. Vigilantes also tackle witchcraft and the occult, which they claim police have no expertise in handling. The configurations of security work, infrastructural provisions, and civic governance consolidate vigilantes’ authority and reinforce their legitimacy. This paper argues that based on their security and civic governance, vigilante groups act as autonomous movement that performs “statecraft from below,” in which sovereign decisions become limited and localized.