Nigeria’s Crime Epidemic vs Leading European Democracies

We learned it from whites? Let’s bury that argument permanently. Nigeria has about 242 million people, roughly the combined population of Germany, France, Italy and Spain—four of the world’s most stable democracies with far larger economies. Yet the data is staggering. Between May 2023 and April 2024, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics recorded 614,937 homicides. Those four European countries together had just over 2,200. Nigeria saw 2.2 million kidnappings, costing more than two trillion naira in ransom; Europe’s total was in the hundreds. Sexual violence tells the same story. Over two million Nigerian women and girls are raped each year, while all 27 EU states combined recorded about 256,000 offences. At the same time, Nigerian criminal gangs export major sex-trafficking networks into Europe, exploiting cultural rituals and psychological debt bondage. Homegrown crimes like ritual killings, organ harvesting and internet fraud also predate colonial rule and operate independently today. We celebrate every Nigerian success, but it’s time we own our failures too.

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