Procedural Justice: A Panacea to Participatory Policing in Nigeria

Over the years, there has been a rising global call for citizens’s engagement in policing for an efficient and effective policing system. This is to assuage the trust deficit in the police and rekindle the hope for a better policing system. However, the experience in contemporary Nigeria has left much to desire. Hence, the need for the recent study, “Procedural Justice: A Panacea to Participatory Policing in Nigeria." The study explored two research objectives, i.e., to investigate public satisfaction with Nigeria Police Force professionalism and to examine procedural justice as a precursor to police legitimacy and participatory policing in Nigeria. The research adopted the procedural justice theory of Tom Tyler as its theoretical framework. The research design for the study is the survey research design, which is cross-sectional in nature. The Cochran’s formula was adopted to get the sample of 403 participants for the study. Data was generated using the mixed method of quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (in-depth interview). The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 25, was used to analyse and interpret quantitative data; the qualitative data was analysed using Atlas Ti, thematic analysis, and content analysis, while multiple regression analysis test statistics at p<0.05 were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The result shows that the satisfactory level of the Nigerian public in the Nigerian police is at a low ebb and that there is a significant relationship between procedural justice, legitimacy, and participatory policing in Nigeria. The study concluded and recommended that for participatory policing to be effective in Nigeria, the Nigerian police must at all times imbibe the culture of professionalism and procedural justice in its dealings with the public.