Police Extortion and Drug Dealers’ Negotiation Strategies: Exploring the Accounts of Street-Level Dealers in Nigeria

This study explores police extortion and the negotiation strategies of dealers in street drug markets. Analysis of 31 in-depth interviews with male retail drug dealers in Uyo, Nigeria, framed by the theoretical concept of habitus, revealed how bribery and collusion with corrupt police officers offered protection from raids and arrests. Connivance with police was a double-edged sword; it also fostered exploitation of dealers by police officers. Police extortion, motivated by greed and opportunism, undermined profit from drug trade. Dealers negotiated police extortion by walking-away from exploitative collusions and forming new ones, and temporarily desisting from selling drugs to reduce the risk of arrest by vindictive police officers. I argue that street market policing, driven by greed and self-interest, encouraged bribery, extortion, and criminal alliances that effectively redirected policing from the goals of crime control and public order to personal enrichment of police officers. On the other hand, the negotiation of extortion through street habitus suggests that drug dealers are not passive victims of police predation. Improved oversight over patrolling officers and providing viable alternative livelihoods for dealers are suggested as measures for addressing police corruption and retail drug trade.