Area Boys: Cause or Symptom of State Weakness?

1.0 Introduction

‘Area Boys’ is a popularised term in Nigeria to refer to young men without viable political, social, or economic purchase to insert themselves into the state.

They are often controversial. As Area Boys can work as informal security services, provide informal labour, or involve themselves in criminal activity [source]. Area Boys’ economic activities at times include drug-dealing and extortion. Area Boys also assume a political role, as local leaders tend to recruit them to further their own political ambitions. Especially to conduct aggressive electioneering in their community. For Area Boys themselves, joining a group gives them a sense of themselves in a shared political community. It also presents an opportunity to claim access to local resources from which they are often explicitly excluded. E.g., financial support.

“Area boys are only known for their notoriety, especially as tools for violence. while aspects of this are true, it is still a single-sided narrative.”

– Tolulope Itegboje [source].

Despite stereotypes about Area Boys being gangsters or petty criminals, Area Boys are a complex phenomena. The precursors to Area Boys were perceived very differently than those today. As Area Boys are decentralised, on an individual level, they can provide security or cause insecurity. They can be both excluded from the political process and central to local elections. They also caught in a bind between being victims and victimisers depending on the area or the context.

2.0 History

Prior to the creation of the term, Nigerians, particularly in the Lagos area, had idioms for disaffected young men. Typical iterations include:

• ‘Lagos boy’ (Omo Eko)
• ‘Street boy’ (Omo Adugbo) or Omo Area

All of which refer to a boy of the community, street, locality. 

In the 1960s, it was a matter of pride to be a Lagos boy from a particular area. This included:

• Abule-Ijesha
• Bariga
• Shomolu
• Mushin
• Lafiaji

In so doing, this type of identification gave disparate Area boys a sense of themselves in a shared political community. They grouped themselves into a form of socio-cultural organisation who carried out duties to their communities. Including acting as de-facto security personnel and organisers of local parties and festivals [source].

2.1 Area Boys’ Naming Convention From Pride to Pejorative

Nigeria’s transition from an agrarian and rural-based to an oil based economy transformed the nation’s society. In the 1970s, agriculture accounted for 85.3% of the country’s GDP. Some 70% of the rural labour force were also employed. Many Nigerians in Lagos had access to safe drinking water, basic health care facilities, and shelter. The objectives of economic development -at the time- were based on addressing poverty. Not least, removing the spectre of unemployment which had emerged due to an influx of people from rural areas [source].

Following the conclusion of the Civil War and the oil boom, the contribution of agriculture to the economy dropped to 30% of GDP in 1970 and further to 4.2% in 1980. As a result, crude oil was the main source of foreign exchange earnings. It provided some 74% of the government’s revenue and over 92.2% of export earnings by 1980 [source].

Dependence on oil meant that Nigerians seeking employment were increasingly dependent on the government. The government accounted for over 70% of their modern sector employment.

Thus, the rate of urbanisation increased with people from rural areas travelling to the cities in search of paid employment. Yet, there was insufficient employment for the demand. In 1970, estimates put 17% of the Lagos’ labour force as unemployed [source].

2.1.1 State Response

To alleviate some of its effects, the Sheu Shagari and Babangida administrations, introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). This consisted of loans provided by the Involuntary Monetary Fund (IMF) to restore Nigeria’s balance of payments. However, mismanagement and unbridled corruption among Nigerian leaders left the economy prostrate and promoted social agitation amongst those left neglected.

In such turbulent times, young people had little chance of finding legal employment and income generating opportunities. Many resorted to joining gangs as their most viable survival strategy. Further, the deepening economic crisis provoked violent demonstrations and opposition to the government’s economic policy. For instance, the country witnessed destructive riots in April-May 1988 and May-June 1989. These were carried out by students who demanded the end of what they considered as the ‘pains of SAP’ [source].

It was in this context that the term ‘Area Boys’ became common. From the late 80s onwards, ‘Area Boys’ as a naming convention became synonymous with criminality. By the 1990s, the onset of economic decline and geometric surge in social vices. (Especially, large scale addiction to prohibited substances like Indian hemp gbana – cocaine and heroin, for example) in Lagos contributed in large measure to the reinterpretation of Area Boyism.

2.1.2 Criminality

The outward manifestation of these social vices. Especially the daylight harassment, intimidation and thieving, not least in the central business district area, and the search for a description of the new menace inevitably led to the misappropriation of Area-Boyism.

Media, academic, and policy circles unduly accepted this negative characterisation of Area Boys, albeit uncritically, to describe anti-social, unemployed, drug-addicted, and morally bankrupt youths.

This recent turn to criminalisation is routinely linked to their role as intermediaries (‘strikers’) to several factors:

• Nigeria’s expanding drugs trade
• Their recruitment as political thugs in the Babangida transition,
• Their prominent role in protests against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). They joined forces with students from the University of Lagos, and against the annulled 1993 elections.

3.0 Who Are the Area Boys in the Contemporary Moment?

Since the 1980s, Area Boys have fundamentally become predicated on social atomism, lack of access to economic means, and drug addiction.

Area Boys usually seek to control their local area and regulate the flow of food and services to their advantage. This takes the form of casual jobs available at a market location or supervisory roles to minimise disruption or pilfering. The operation of car parks, in which area boys seek informal employment, is a typical site for these contests.

For example, Area Boys have routinely fought against local councils and the National Union of Road Transport Workers for rights to issue daily operating licences and to collect commission from vehicle loading in towns and villages across the South. Since access to even these marginal resources is scarce, it is subject to keen competition and these claims have contributed to internal conflicts between the Area Boys, but it has also exacerbated tensions with migrants [source].

3.1 Do Area Boys Provide Security?

Despite their frequent involvement in criminal activity, Area Boys sometimes gain some legitimacy within the wider community as vigilantes that exact punitive retribution on outsiders who prey on the local community. Yet their failure to provide security, or at least monitoring of criminal activities, call this legitimation into question. Rather than custodians, the local community frequently alienates Area Boys, despite nominally belonging to the same community.

For instance, on an almost annual basis at Christmas time in New Benin market, Area Boys start fires at night as a pretext for large-scale looting. The various groupings affiliated economically to the market, including the market traders’ association and the Area Boys, convene meetings to find and hold accountable the perpetrators. The causes of arson and the consequent looting are attributed as lawless acts committed by those outside the local community, even if the evidence is ambiguous and locals are suspected [source].

3.2 Area Boys’ Patrons and Sponsors

Formal and informal patrons will support Area Boys financially or sponsor social events. In return, patrons gain secure extra security, political support and a means of effecting disorder [source]. By invoking disorder (such as the cessation of state-regulated market activities), Area Boys define the boundaries of a local moral community and modes of accountability within it. However, while they define the boundaries of moral community; they are, on a micro-level, causing disorder to coerce and influence people.

Mutual support in times of crisis or financial difficulty is strong amongst Area Boys and shapes the wider community. For instance, in 1996, the news of the death of a bush taxi-driver precipitated the complete cessation of long-distance transport. Area Boys and drivers blocked the road with vehicles and tied leaves to the car fronts to indicate mourning. Area Boys imposed this form of mourning on all market stallholders, who were unable to transport goods

Even though some had little vested interests in the tragedy, merchants were still incorporated by their participation into the moral boundaries of the local community. Failure to participate in such events results in punitive sanctions and exclusionary tactics which, in extreme cases, may force the stallholder to quit the market permanently [source], [source].

3.4 ‘Indigenes’ Versus Migrants

Area Boys are in part a response to the influx of ‘migrants’ into urban areas. Fears of political and economic marginalisation amongst youth, unemployed urban ‘indigenes’ lead to sometimes violent contests led by youth gangs.

Although mostly petty and mundane, these conflicts reveal two key points:

• Rights of resource access: – Being ‘from’ the area has more legitimate claim to resources.
• Gaining community support: – Area Boys inserting themselves into the community’s transactional flows often gives them legitimacy within the community that excluded them.

By these means, they demand to be taken seriously by patrons, market sellers, and transport operators within a given area. They form part of patronage networks that co-opt them into a system in which they either exploit or enforce the informal rules of the community in which they live.

4.0 Future of Area Boys

Some twenty years on, Area Boyism is increasingly synonymous with negative living among youths in different parts of the world. This prompted Ibrahim Adbullah’s equation of the notorious ‘Rare Man Dem’ culture and ‘Rare Boys’ of Freetown in Sierra Leone with Area-Boyism and Area Boys [source].

Lagos has the highest concentration of police to cope with the presence of Area Boys [source]. The moral panic generated by the activities of the ‘Area Boys’ is increased by the attitude of the government towards the phenomenon as evident by Bola Tinubu’s declaration that: “we can’t curb the Area boys” [source].

This position is suggestive of the relationship between the Area Boys and the government. They will likely remain ostracised from the community on a macro level by the organs of state (e.g, police). Yet the state will simultaneously depend on them to maintain it.

5.0 Conclusion

Once seen as informal enforcers of community rights, morals, and laws; Area Boys have (re-)emerged in the late 1980s as dangerous gangs. The combined effects of oil dependency, the liberalisation of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and post-Cold War privatisation created a large number of politically and economically marginalised people in cities, at which Area Boy recruits sat at the centre.

They are synonymous with criminality as a result of links to the expanding drugs trade and their use of violence in religious and ethnic riots and political protests. Patronage and the possibilities of gang ownership have brought these groups into secretive links with the business and political classes.