ABSTRACT
Groups such as these are the primary providers of protection, deterrence, investigation, resolution, and punishment for most Africans in most circumstances. e Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD; 2007, 17) asserted that the evidence suggests that “in sub-Saharan Africa at least 80 percent of justice services are delivered by nonstate providers.” In Africa as a whole, customary courts, oen the dominant form of regulation and dispute resolution, are estimated to cover up to 90 percent of the population (Chirayath, Sage, and Woolcock 2005, 3). In recognition of their prevalence and their dominance of the justice and security sector, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) wrote a policy paper on how to support these nonstate networks (DFID 2004), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has argued that these networks “are the cornerstone of dispute resolution and access to justice for the majority of populations, especially the poor and disadvantaged in many countries, where informal justice systems usually resolve between 80 and 90 percent of disputes” (Wojkowska 2006). Similarly, the OECD (2007) published recommendations on how justice development practitioners can support their activities. Data from the national crime victimization survey in Nigeria (CLEEN Foundation 2005) showed that 50 percent of Nigerians patronize the services of informal policing systems for their protection from criminal attacks. Other research from Nigeria showed that in four of its federal states “a total of 16 types of informal policing structures [have been identied] that were established in their communities to deal with crime”; in two of the four states, these networks were the population’s preferred choice of delivery 88.9 and 62.5 percent of the time; in one state where only 38.1 percent of the population availed themselves of the services of these local justice networks, 94.7 percent of the population approved of and supported their compatriots using their services (Alemika and Chukwuma 2004, 6). e evidence, therefore, is overwhelming that local or nonstate justice is a signicant provider of services in Africa.
