Youth and Mob Justice Acts in Lagos, Nigeria: a desperate attempt to recover a social usefulness?

My research focuses on the violent informal punishment (known as mob or jungle justice) of captured offenders in Lagos, Nigeria. What is disturbing about ‘jungle’ justice in Nigeria is its trivialization and ‘normalization’ among the population. It is the main way in which people deal with insecurity and crime in their cities and neighborhoods, and it usually leads to the death of the alleged criminal. My aim is to examine how and why mob justice, although illicit, is flourishing and expanding in Lagos; to examine its social function in regards to youth marginalization in the specific context of Nigeria’s socio-economic integration into late capitalism/modernity, and then to demonstrate the state’s complicity in its development and its roots. Through an Ethnographic observation of vigilantes’ groups and life-story interviews with individual vigilantes, I expect to excavate the hidden meaning of this practice, its messages as well as its political and criminological significations.