Crime
Nigeria is home to a substantial network of organized crime, active especially in drug trafficking. Nigerian criminal groups are heavily involved in drug trafficking, shipping heroin from Asian countries to Europe and America; and cocaine from South America to Europe and South Africa. . The various Nigerian Confraternities or "campus cults" are active in both organized crime and in political violence as well as providing a network of corruption within Nigeria. As confraternities have extensive connections with political and military figures, they offer excellent alumni networking opportunities. The Supreme Vikings Confraternity, for example, boasts that twelve members of the Rivers State House of Assembly are cult members. On lower levels of society, there are the "area boys", organized gangs mostly active in Lagos who specialize in mugging and small-scale drug dealing. According to official statistics, gang violence in Lagos resulted in 273 civilians and 84 policemen killed in the period of August 2000 to May 2001.
Nigeria is also pervaded by political corruption. It is ranked 143 out of 182 countries in Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Read more about this topic: Nigerian Diaspora
Famous quotes containing the word crime:
“After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)
“Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s crime when it sets out to crush that individuality.”
—Ian McEwan (b. 1938)