Every generation of Nigerians has inherited the same promise: police reform. Successive administrations have announced new policies, committees, operational guidelines, and institutional restructuring aimed at transforming the Nigeria Police into a professional and accountable institution. Yet for many citizens, the lived reality of policing remains largely unchanged. The institution entrusted with protecting the public continues, in far too many instances, to evoke fear rather than confidence, coercion rather than service, and suspicion rather than trust.
Institutions are ultimately judged not by their promises but by their outcomes. Across decades of reform efforts, citizens have continued to report unlawful arrests, extortion, arbitrary detention, intimidation, torture, and, in some cases, fatal use of force. These allegations have persisted through different governments, police leaderships, and reform programmes. They have survived media exposés, judicial pronouncements, legislative interventions, and public outrage. When the same patterns endure despite repeated attempts at reform, it becomes difficult to attribute the problem merely to a few errant officers. A problem that consistently survives reform efforts is more likely structural. This reality was brought into sharp focus during the End SARS protests, perhaps the most significant public indictment of police misconduct in Nigeria’s recent history. Millions of young Nigerians mobilised around the belief that routine abuses of police power had become intolerable. The protests generated international attention and compelled official responses, including investigative panels, recommendations, and promises of change. For a moment, many believed a genuine turning point had arrived. Yet the years that followed revealed a familiar pattern of mere reform rhetoric, but many of the underlying complaints remained.
Indeed, recent reports from different parts of the country continue to contain allegations of unlawful killings, extortion, harassment, and abuse of authority. Technological advances initially appeared capable of altering this reality. Citizens armed with smartphones could document misconduct and expose it to public scrutiny. While such exposure occasionally triggered disciplinary action, the system itself adapted. Extortion that was once allegedly conducted in cash increasingly moved to electronic transfers, third-party accounts, and point-of-sale operators. Â The methods evolved, but the underlying conduct remained. The abuse did not disappear; it merely modernised. In response to criticism, Police authorities frequently point to instances where officers have been suspended, dismissed, or prosecuted as evidence of accountability. Such measures are commendable where they occur, but they do not necessarily demonstrate institutional accountability and systemic reform. Accountability is not measured by how institutions respond to the few cases that become public; it is measured by whether misconduct is consistently deterred before it occurs. A police institution should not require a viral video before discipline is activated, nor should justice depend upon public outrage before consequences follow misconduct. Abuse of citizens right must carry predictable consequences, regardless of whether cameras are present.
The persistence of misconduct despite decades of reform raises a deeper question about incentives. Human beings respond to incentives, and institutions are no different. Corruption flourishes where misconduct yields benefits and consequences remain uncertain, delayed, or ineffective. Much of the discourse surrounding police reform in Nigeria has focused on internal disciplinary mechanisms and executive promises of restructuring. Yet these approaches have produced limited results. The uncomfortable possibility is that meaningful reform may not emerge from a system that bears little cost for failing to reform itself. If political solutions and internal accountability have proven insufficient, greater attention may need to be directed toward the judiciary as an instrument of institutional correction. Courts cannot redesign institutions, formulate policy, or train officers. What they can do is impose consequences. History repeatedly demonstrates that organisations become more responsive when misconduct becomes costly.
It must, however, be acknowledged that litigation is not a complete solution. It is conceded that while litigation can create pressure points, it rarely scales into systemic institutional redesign without parallel political and administrative reform; but it is further argued that in this instance it can trigger pressure points that leads to reform. The Nigerian justice system faces significant challenges, including delays, procedural complexity, high costs, inconsistent enforcement of judgments, and heavy case backlogs. Access to justice remains particularly difficult for many citizens struggling with economic hardship. For victims of police abuse, the burden of funding legal representation and sustaining lengthy proceedings can be overwhelming. These realities underscore the need for stronger legal aid schemes, pro bono services, public interest litigation, civil society support, and innovative funding mechanisms. Nevertheless, the imperfections of the judicial system do not diminish the importance of legal accountability.
Against this background, citizens may increasingly need to utilise available judicial and quasi-judicial mechanisms to challenge abuse of power. These include fundamental rights enforcement proceedings and garnishee proceedings, malicious prosecution, claims for breach of statutory duty, actions for misfeasance in public office, complaints under the Code of Conduct framework and petition to the Police Service Commission. While none of these mechanisms is sufficient on its own, together they offer pathways through which official misconduct can attract meaningful consequences.
Among the most powerful and fastest of these mechanisms is the enforcement of fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees certain liberties, dignity, fair hearing, freedom of movement, and protection from unlawful detention. Where these rights are violated, courts possess the authority to grant monetary compensation. Significantly, monetary judgments obtained against the Nigeria Police can ultimately result in garnishee proceedings against police funds. The Supreme Court’s decision in CBN v. Ochife emphasised the importance of joining both the Nigeria Police Force and the Police Service Commission as MDAs in such proceedings, because these are the entities holding accounts with CBN, and that AGF’s consent is not needed in such circumstance. Over time, a sustained pattern of successful litigation creates financial, reputational, and institutional pressures that no organization can indefinitely ignore.
Beyond constitutional claims lies the tort of malicious prosecution. Citizens have often complained of arrests, investigations, and prosecutions that appear motivated by intimidation, retaliation, or personal vendettas rather than genuine evidence of criminal conduct. Nigerian courts have long recognised that the criminal justice process cannot be weaponised without consequence. In Balogun v. Amubikahun and Bayol v. Ahemba, the courts affirmed that liability may arise where criminal proceedings are initiated without reasonable cause and with malice. These decisions reflect a broader principle that state power must not be set into motion as an instrument of oppression.
Another potentially significant but underutilised remedy lies in the tort of breach of statutory duty. Modern policing is governed by obligations imposed by the Constitution, the Police Act, and criminal justice legislation. These duties are not merely aspirational; they exist to protect citizens. Where statutory obligations are violated and damage results, there is a strong argument that compensation should follow. Although Nigerian courts are yet to fully develop this area in the context of police accountability, its potential importance should not be underestimated. A legal system that imposes duties without consequences for their breach risks reducing law to mere symbolism.
Also powerful is the tort of misfeasance in public office, one of the common law’s most direct responses to the abuse of governmental power. The tort is founded on the principle that public authority exists for public purposes and not for personal gain, oppression, abuse or unlawful advantage. Where a public officer knowingly exceeds lawful authority or acts with reckless disregard for legality, liability may arise. The tort’s foundations can be traced to Ashby v. White, while subsequent decisions such as Farrington v. Thomson and Dunlop v. Woollahra Municipal Council reinforced its status as a well-established mechanism for addressing deliberate abuse of official power. Its relevance to contemporary policing is obvious. Extortion, unlawful detention, abuse of office, fabricated allegations, and deliberate violations of constitutional rights all represent potential examples of public power being exercised for improper purposes.
The accountability framework extends beyond traditional litigation. The Code of Conduct regime is built upon the principle that public office is a public trust. Members of the Nigeria Police Force fall within the category of public officers subject to its provisions. Section 13 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act prohibits public officers from abusing their positions in ways that prejudice the rights of citizens. Consequently, citizens may also explore complaints grounded in abuse of office through the Code of Conduct framework as an additional avenue for accountability.
Another alternative to traditional litigation is to address a petition detailing such abuse of office to the Police Service Commission, the Commission has the tendency to deeply regulate and intervene in instances of Police abuse.
None of these mechanisms, standing alone, will transform Nigerian policing overnight. No judgment can instantly change institutional culture, and no damages award can substitute for effective leadership. Yet history demonstrates that institutions become responsive when misconduct carries consequences. The most enduring reforms often occur not because institutions voluntarily embrace change but because the costs of resisting change become unsustainable.
For too long, discussions about police reform in Nigeria have focused primarily on what the police should do for themselves. Perhaps the more important question is what citizens can lawfully do to compel accountability. Reform based solely on promises depends on goodwill. Reform anchored in enforceable legal consequences depends on incentives, and incentives possess a far greater capacity to alter behaviour.
The lesson is therefore simple. If abuse of power carries little cost, abuse will persist. If violations of rights generate predictable legal consequences, institutional behaviour begins to change. The struggle for accountable policing may ultimately be won not in conferences, press briefings, or reform committees, but in courtrooms where the law is transformed from a statement of ideals into an instrument of consequence. In the final analysis, institutions rarely reform because they are asked to do so. They reform because the price of refusing becomes too high.
The lesson is therefore straightforward. If abuse of power carries little cost, abuse will persist. If violations of rights generate predictable legal consequences, institutional conduct may gradually begin to change. The struggle for accountable policing may ultimately be won not in conferences, press briefings, or reform committees, but by citizens who refuse to tolerate abuse and who utilise every lawful mechanism available to ensure that police misconduct carries real consequences. Institutions rarely reform because they are asked to do so. More often, they reform because the price of refusing becomes too high.
Opatola Victor is the National Coordinator Lawyers for Civil Liberties and can be reached via victor@lacivler.org
