INSECURITY AND TERRORISTS’ THREATS OF ATTACKS ON SELECTED NIGERIAN CITIES: IMPLICATIONS ON LAGOS RESIDENTS’ CONCERNS FOR SAFETY AND THE CITY SECURITY PLANNING

Terrorism is common but limited to certain towns in Nigeria. However, the nomenclature seems to be changing as security intelligence has it that terrorist groups are planning attacks targeting Lagos, and other notable cities. This study therefore examines concerns for safety among residents and implications on individual and city-level security planning in Lagos. The official wards as demarcated by the Independent National Electoral Commission represent clusters from which at least a respondent was randomly selected. The study’s respondents were selected from 49 (one of every five wards {20%}) wards out of 245 wards in Lagos. In the selected wards, at least two respondents were randomly selected. A total of 288 residents participated in the survey, but, only 134 respondents accurately completed the questionnaire used in this analysis, representing a 58.7% response rate. Results show that 78% of the respondents were concerned about their safety while some 90% took precaution by avoiding certain places and activities. Findings show significant relations between awareness of the planned attacks, concerns for safety, and precautionary behaviour among respondents. Besides, results show that respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, neighbourhood environmental design, and past crime victimisation mediate concerns for safety and security behaviour. The study concludes that the emergence of this security intelligence in the public domain has further contributed to the increasing fear and residents’ mobility change. The study recommends among others policing strategies, a new urbanism, where urban planning and design strategies are applied to make attacks more difficult to carry out in soft spaces and places

EXPLORING THE PSYCHOSOCIAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE IN SOUTHWEST NIGERIA

The global rate of suicide is alarming, and the prevalence in Africa, especially  Nigeria, is more worrisome. The causes of suicide have been evaluated from a different perspective; however, studies on the psychosocial dimension in Africa are limited. With the increasing rate of Suicide in Nigeria and the literature gap in the psychosocial dimensions, this study explored the psychosocial causes of Suicide in Nigeria through a qualitative approach. The southwestern states in Nigeria were considered in this study because of the accounted high rate of suicide. States such as Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti were considered in this study. A purposive sampling technique was used to select key informants consisting of police officials, and religious and opinion leaders. Four themes emanate from the thematic analysis – economic challenges, frustration, mental issues and family issues were found to be psychosocial antecedents of suicide in Nigeria. Promotion of psychic support and social cohesion has been suggested to reduce suicide

Women and violent crimes in Nigeria: a theoretical, historical and contemporary overview

Despite the continuous dominance of males in crime statistics as offenders and prisoners, there is an apparent increase in women’s involvement in violent crimes in Nigeria. However, the limited attention paid to this trend appears to be impeding serious understanding of the correlates of women’s increasing involvement in violence, thereby almost foreclosing efforts at engendering effective interventions. Although, more arrests of women offenders have been made, and more female prisons built, yet, the study of crime and the justice process in Nigeria is still shaped by male experiences. This article, therefore, examines cases of reported female violence in Nigeria to glean out the peculiarities of gender as well as the complex interplay of cultural, behavioural, and social variables in explaining women and violence in contemporary Nigeria. A review of literature on the historical development of female criminality and factors attributed to the patterns and typologies of crimes women participated in from the traditional to modern Nigerian society are made. In addition, a review of major theories explaining the rise in female criminality is done. While the gradual but conscious development of women’s involvement in violent crimes in Nigeria is noted, the article argues that no singular cause, explanation or theory accounts for the rise in women’s violence. The article concludes by stating the need for more empirical studies focusing on women and violent crimes in Nigeria, to engender more understanding of female violence. Also, gender-sensitive interventions are suggested for effective control of female-perpetrated violent crimes in Nigeria

Workplace Absenteeism in the Nigerian Telecommunication Sector: Causes, Consequences and Control

In spite of the prevalence of workplace absenteeism within the Nigerian industry, the quantification of the impact that it has on productivity has not been ascertained. Though, appreciable number of studies has been committed to understand why employees excuse themselves from duties, however, these studies have been largely situated within the developed Western communities of Europe and America. Therefore, this study aimed to cover the gap in literature by examining the peculiarities of workplace absenteeism within the Nigerian work and cultural environment. The study empirically examined the policies and strategies that are deployed by telecommunication companies to address the issue of high absenteeism of employees in their workplaces. Adopting the use of a combination of primary and secondary data collection methods of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the study solicited information from 12 in-depth interviews, 4 key informant interviews and 400 questionnaires. It found that the measures and policies put into use by the telecoms companies leans very strongly on the Western style of managing workplace absenteeism. It was suggested that the management of indigenous companies should always consider the peculiarity of the Nigerian environmental, cultural and traditional situations in any measure that they are adopting from foreign countries.LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 9(3), 1-16, 201

Emotional and financial costs of online dating scam: A phenomenological narrative of the experiences of victims of Nigerian romance fraudsters

Qualitative research on the experiences of victims of online dating romance scams is limited. Following a phenomenological framework, this study explores victims’ accounts of interactions with offenders from first contact, development of romance, patterns of exploitation, eventual revelation, and financial and emotional costs of dating fraud. Ten participants from six countries who were victims of Nigerian romance fraudsters took part in one-to-one, semi-structured video interviews and an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was carried out. Four superordinate themes were identified from participants’ experiences: i) online romance, ii) exploitations, iii) revelations, and iv) reactions. These themes highlighted the uniqueness of the experiences of victims of online dating scams and the depth of emotional loss suffered after their victimization. Findings suggested that offenders target middle-aged women with troubled marriages or widows with inherited wealth, engage in lengthy pre-dating friendships with their targets, and deploy different forms of emotional blackmail to exploit their victims. These were found to have severe financial and long-term emotional consequences on victims. Participants reported they sought legal redress as a recovery strategy from their emotional sufferings. These findings have important practical and policy implications if online romance dating scams, and their financial and non-financial consequences are to be addressed

A Theoretical Discourse of Substance Abuse and Security Threat among Nigerian Youths; Current Literatures and Interrogations

The ever increasing menace associated with substance or illegal drug consumption among the Nigerian youth is endemic and it has posed as serious challenges and threats toward achieving progressive growth and development on the part of the families, community members, medical practitioners, social workers and other researched area throughout the world. Several publications articulated claim that youths are the future leaders of tomorrow due to their unique characteristics. Unfortunately when denied access to showcase their talents, the situation result to antisocial behaviour (trauma, dependency, larceny,/thefts, poor manpower development among others) that may hampered human and societal development Strain theory, Rational Choice theory and Structural Functionalism were adopted. Content analysis method was adopted in reviewing various publications from Jstor, Scopus, PDF, and Scholarly Google among others. The consequence of increase in security issues can be related to several factors which include illicit drug usage, poor parenting style, peer pressure, poor role modelling. On these grounds, the following recommendations were make- the parent should by all means socialized their children in the way of the Lord so that they will not depart from it, de-associate themselves from negative or bad company as friends or role model, the government at all levels should create recreation, sports centres for the youths to channel their youthful energy, more of public awareness should be carried out in various communities to awake the moral consciousness of the youths concerning negative consequences associated with illicit drug intak

Indicators of Incidence of Criminality in Mushin, Lagos; Role of Community Policing

The persistence reports on crime in Mushin are derogatory in nature and generate concerns for noble and intellectual researcher across Nigeria. Thus, Mushin was listed as one of the notorious areas in Lagos with constant cases of criminal activities that negate growth and development of the State. Extant literatures and Instinctual drive theory by Sigmund Freud was adopted for the justification of the inquiry. Mixed methods and cross sectional research was adopted with structured and unstructured questionnaires for collection of quantitative and qualitative data respectively from the participants at Mushin, Lagos. Yemane Taro (1963) formula for sample size was adopted but due to fear of unknown demonstrated by the participants after screening, coding and editing 185 quantitative instruments was found useful with 10 participants that willingly gave their consent to give verbal information The result gathered shows that there is relationship between personal characteristics and criminality at r=0.594, F-value yields F=99.837. Psychological factors and criminality at r=0.694, F=170.211. Parent socio economic factors and criminality at r=0.798, F=320.928.  Environmental factors and criminality at r=0.654, F=136.807 Community policing and criminality at r=0.826, r=0.951 while the R-Square is 0.904. On this ground, the following recommendations were made; Nigerian government all levels, Philanthropist, Multinational organizations and the entire community members must come together to tackled the menace, Nigeria security should learn not to divulge classified information on issue of insecurity among others