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The National Bureau of Statistics released its 2016 National Crime Statistics report showing that about 125, 790 crime cases were registered in the country for the year. Out of this number about 45,554 were crimes related to offence against persons, 65,397 crimes against property, 12, 144 crime against unlawful authority and crime against local laws.
According to the Bureau, offence against persons are those offences against human beings e.g. murder, manslaughter, infanticide, concealment of birth, rape and other physical abuse while offence against properties are those offences against human belonging, properties of any kind e.g. stealing, receiving stolen properties, obtaining property by false pretence, robbery, burglary and house breaking.
Offences against lawful authority is any offence commitment against any establishment of the law e.g.failure to pay your tax (FIRS) amounts to an offence against lawful authority and Offences against local acts are those offences committed against laws that we cannot enforce outside Nigeria.
See chart
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The nuggets;
- Lagos State has the highest percentage share of total cases reported with 36.08% and 45,385 cases recorded.
- FCT Abuja and Delta State followed closely with 10.48% and 13,181 and 6.25% and 7,867 cases recorded respectively.
- Katsina State has the lowest percentage share of total cases reported with 0.10% and 120 cases recorded.
- Abia and Zamfara States followed closely with 0.29% and 364 and 0.38% and 483
cases recorded respectively - It also observed that Lagos, Abuja, Delta and Kano Sates came tops for States with highest proportion of offence against human belonging, properties of any kind.
Get the report here
Or maybe Lagos is the state with the best community police relations, which makes it more likely for criminal cases to be reported
This may be due to the literacy levels, requirements to obtain police reports in order to obtain insurance claims or prove occurrence of crimes etc..
But, the densely populated nature of the state, with more complex societies which is harboring a lot anonymous and underground people and sub-communities means criminal activities are expected to be more in Lagos.
But the disparity in the Lagos figures compared to cities perceived to be less safe (e.g. Port Harcourt, Rivers) or those with history of recorded unrest and total breakdown of law and order (e.g. Kaduna) would suggest that my two previous points I raised may have a bigger effect on the result of this survey.
Could the report have been biased by low incidence of reporting in some states? Quite interesting that Rivers state ranks alongside (or lower) than Oyo and Ondo states.