Nehemiah Community Security Approach and Police-Community Partnership: Seeking Appropriate Community Policing Approach in Nigerian Context

Prof Matthew Michael; Ajibade David Adebayo

doi:10.56201/ijrcp.vol.10.no7.2025.pg15.25

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Nehemiah Community Security Approach and Police-Community Partnership: Seeking Appropriate Community Policing Approach in Nigerian Context

Prof Matthew Michael, Ajibade David Adebayo

Abstract

Nehemiah 4 narrative, among many Old Testament narratives contained community policing motifs which can be of help to modern man in tackling insecurity caused by acts of terrorism and banditry in local communities. This work underscores that community safety clues are not only present in the social literatures alone, the Holy Bible also has relevant voices in this regard. According to Nehemiah narrative, Yehud community was defenseless because its walls were burnt down with fire and its surrounding communities’ heads also constituted terror through threats to its lives and properties. The “WE” sections of the narrative which the Hebrew word anachnu (?????? ???) embodied painted clearly the image of community efforts. There is a connection between this Nehemiah community security approach and community policing philosophy of police- community partnership to secure the community. The objective of this research is to seek appropriate community policing approach in Nigerian context. Through qualitative and descriptive approaches, Nehemiah community security approach and police-community partnership approach were examined and the findings showed that the former collaborated with fully armed trusted community indigenes to secure the same community while the latter partnered with armless civilians. The former succeeded but the later failed due to trust-deficit that frustrated partnership. Conclusion and recommendation proved that community policing approach that can curb insecurity in Nigerian context is the model that replaces partnership with armless community civilian with recruit the indigenes of the community, weaponized them and send them back to their community to defend it.

Keywords

NehemiahInsecurityCommunity PolicingPartnershipTrust-deficit.

References

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Nehemiah Community Security Approach and Police-Community Partnership: Seeking Appropriate Community Policing Approach in Nigerian Context

Abstract

Keywords

References

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