PATTERN OF PERCEIVED FEAR OF CRIME IN URBAN AND SEMI-URBAN AREAS OF IBADAN, NIGERIA

Abstract

The growing insecurity and fear of crime are among the major factors reducing the quality of life of urban dwellers as people experience fear of crime than actual crime. Previous studies have focused largely on the socio-psychological causes and implications of crime, while little attention has been given to the fear of crime as well as its spatial pattern. This study was therefore, designed to examine the pattern of perceived fear of crime (PFC) in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Vulnerability Theory and the Concept of Emotion provided the framework, while the survey design was adopted. Three residential localities were purposively selected from each of the five urban and six semi-urban Local Government Areas (LGAs). The roads in the selected localities were classified into distributor, minor and access. All residential buildings (63,080) within distributor (100m), minor (50m) and access (25m) were enumerated, while 1,577 buildings (urban) 696, (semi-urban) 881 were randomly selected using, cordon sampling technique. A structured questionnaire which focused on socio-economic characteristics, PFC housing characteristics and physical planning attributes was administered on household heads. Two focus group discussions were conducted within the LGAs (urban- Ibadan North) and (semi-urban-Egbeda) with formal (police, civil defence) and informal (vigilante, landlord/tenant associations, Odua People’s Congress) security agents. Descriptive and inferential statistics, (Analysis of variance) were used to analyse data at p≤0.05. Qualitative data were content analysed.

Respondents age was 32.41± 11.9 years, while 53.5% were males. In the urban, PFC varied from 79.5% in Ibadan North-East to 62.9% in Ibadan North LGA while PFC in semi-urban varied from 73.0% in Ido to 48.5% in Akinyele LGA. The PFC (kidnap 87.8%) varied from 59.0% in Ibadan South-East to 47.2% in Ibadan North, PFC (rape 42.7%) varied from 66.1% in Ibadan South-West to 39.0% in Akinyele, while PFC (robbery 49.0%) varied from 73.0% in Ibadan South-East to 29.5% in Ona-Ara LGA. In the urban perceived fear of burglary varied from 58.9% in Ibadan North to 38.5% in Ibadan South-East. Tenants 72.8% in urban (Ibadan South-West) responded to fear of crime by installing burglary proof windows and doors while 61.2% in Ibadan North installed Close Circuit Television (CCTV). Poor illumination increased PFC across Ibadan South-East (86.7%), Egbeda (83.1%) and Ibadan North (73.9%) but low in Oluyole (34.2%) LGAs while absence of residential layout and non-adherence to minimum building setback increased fear of crime in (semi-urban) Egbeda (86.4%) and Ona-Ara (78.3%). There was variation in perceived fear of crime across LGAs in Ibadan (F(10, 1575)=5.61). Non-adherence to physical planning regulations, anonymous nature of urban settings and poor collaboration among security agencies greatly influenced PFC.

The pattern of perceived fear of armed robbery, burglary and theft was more prominent in night time in semi-urban, while fear of rape, kidnap and attack was more prominent in day time in urban LGAs in Ibadan, Nigeria. Partnership among formal and informal agents in urban security should be improved upon, while building standards and planning regulations should be enforced.