IMPACT OF COMMUNITY POLICING ON SECURITY MANAGEMENT IN KUBWA, BWARI AREA COUNCIL FCT-ABUJA

Abstract

The concept of National Security has been known to connote the preservation of sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as internal stability. However, it is the purpose of national security to find security solutions through community policing for the protection of lives and property, physical infrastructure, and key assets as well as hinder the movement of terrorists and their cells. It was against this background that this study adopted the Gap theory to investigate impact of community policing on security management in Kubwa, Bwari area council FCT-Abuja. This study decomposed community policing into interconnectedness between the Nigeria Law Enforcement Agencies with the host community and accommodation of private and informal security providers into the Nigeria Security architecture. This study employed an exploratory research design with reliance on publicly available archive documents. The study relies solely on secondary data. The research is conducted by examining literature concerning community policing and security management. The literature was obtained through searches in the publicly available material. Literature from non-serial publications, official reports, and conferences has been included particularly if they have been cited by other references in connection with national security, community policing, security architecture, and security management. In findings, the paper identified poor interconnectedness between the Nigeria Law Enforcement Agencies with the very community they set out to protect. The finding from the study submits that Nigeria's Security architecture is too unitary hence its inability to incorporate the private security providers, and other informal security actors in addressing insecurity. The study recommends that the Nigerian security agency's ratings and funding should be linked to the community they serve. The study also recommends that Nigeria's Security architecture should encourage decentralization of commands and control closer to the people by unbundling security from the exclusive list into the concurrent list, so as to properly situate security closer to the people and not the elite alone.