Prevalence of Lethal and Non-lethal Crimes in Nigeria

The revolution in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has remained an effective means of reporting crime to the public. Modern hardware and software devices have been deployed by Trent Online and Nigeria Watch to effectively furnish Nigerians including the academia, policy formulators, decision makers, government institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations with relevant data and statistics on trends and patterns of lethal and non-lethal crime in Nigeria. Findings in this article show that armed robberies is a recurring form of crime in Nigeria, contributing about 50% of an overall 8516 deaths in 3, 840 fatal incidents between June 2006 and September, 2015 nationwide. Lagos, Rivers, Ogun, Benue and Imo states were reported as the most affected crime states. Findings also show more crime fatalities in the Southern part of Nigeria than in the North. This article therefore maintains that the inability of government to address most of the sources of crime explains why it has become difficult to nip in the bud.