Nigeria talks constantly about inflation, unemployment, oil theft, corruption, kidnapping and the cost of governance. Yet another economic drain is taking place every day, quietly and repeatedly, in our homes, farms, streets, businesses and communities:
The ordinary theft of what Nigerians have worked to acquire.
A telephone disappears. A home is broken into. Livestock is stolen. Crops vanish before harvest. A motorcycle or vehicle is taken. Equipment disappears from a workplace. Cables, fittings and public infrastructure are stripped away.
Individually, many of these crimes appear too small to command national attention.
Collectively, they constitute an enormous transfer of wealth from victims to criminals — and Nigeria does not appear to know its full monetary value.
That should concern us.
The Numbers Are Already Alarming
The National Bureau of Statistics’ Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS) 2024, covering May 2023 to April 2024, estimated approximately 51.89 million crime incidents experienced by Nigerian households.
About 15.3 million households — 34.3 per cent — experienced at least one crime.
Among the findings were disturbing levels of property-related victimisation.
Home robbery affected an estimated 4.14 million households.
Livestock theft recorded a prevalence of approximately 18 per cent, while crop theft stood at about 15.8 per cent.
Phone theft was among the most widespread individual crimes, with estimates running into tens of millions of incidents.
Motor-vehicle-related theft also represented a substantial burden.
These are not merely crime statistics.
They represent destroyed household savings, lost working capital, interrupted livelihoods and assets that families may have spent years acquiring.
What Is the Naira Value?
Here we encounter a remarkable national information gap.
We can count millions of incidents, but we cannot readily answer a basic question:
How much wealth are Nigerians losing to theft every year?
The NBS survey does not provide one aggregate national monetary value for phones, vehicles, cash, electronics, livestock, crops and other property stolen from Nigerians.
Contrast that with kidnapping.
The same survey estimated ransom payments of approximately ₦2.23 trillion during the period examined.
That figure immediately communicates the economic magnitude of kidnapping.
Where is the equivalent figure for theft?
There isn’t one.
And that absence matters.
Several Trillion Naira May Be Disappearing
Any attempt to put a monetary value on the property stolen must therefore be treated cautiously.
NNH’s preliminary examination of the reported crime volumes, combined with conservative assumptions about the values of phones, household property, livestock, crops and vehicles, suggests that the direct value involved could conceivably run into several trillion naira annually.
Depending on the assumptions used, an illustrative range could extend into approximately ₦5 trillion to ₦12 trillion.
We emphasise: This is not an NBS estimate.
It is not an official government figure, and it should not be presented as one.
It is an extrapolation intended to demonstrate the size of the unanswered economic question.
Indeed, whether the eventual scientifically established figure is ₦3 trillion, ₦5 trillion, ₦10 trillion or considerably more is secondary to the central point:
Nigeria should know.
Theft Is an Economic Issue
When a trader’s phone is stolen, the loss may include customer contacts, banking access and business records.
When a farmer loses livestock, the family loses productive capital.
When crops are stolen, months of labour disappear overnight.
When a household is burgled, replacing a television, refrigerator, generator, computer or telephone means diverting money that would otherwise have paid school fees, rent, healthcare or investment.
When cables and public infrastructure are stolen, Nigerians effectively pay twice — once to build them and again to replace them.
The economic cost of theft therefore extends far beyond the resale value of stolen property.
There are replacement costs, lost productivity, security expenditure, interrupted businesses, higher insurance costs and the enormous psychological cost of living in fear.
Seen this way, persistent theft functions almost like an unofficial tax on Nigerian households and businesses.
Except this tax finances criminals rather than the state.
The Most Troubling Statistic May Be Trust
Perhaps even more concerning than the number of crimes is what happens afterwards.
Only a minority of victims report their experiences to the police.
For home robbery, NBS reported that roughly 36.3 per cent of affected households reported to the police. Across households experiencing crime generally, reporting was substantially lower.
Why?
Among the reasons identified are lack of confidence that reporting will produce meaningful action.
That creates a dangerous cycle.
Citizens do not report because they believe little will happen. Law-enforcement records consequently understate crime. Government planning then relies on incomplete information. Criminals perceive little likelihood of detection or recovery. And citizens become still less inclined to report.
That cycle must be broken.
Recovery Must Become a Security Performance Indicator
Arrests alone cannot be the principal measurement of success.
For property crime, Nigerians want something much more tangible:
Find the property. Find the criminal. Return the property.
If recovery rates remain extremely low, then millions of Nigerians are effectively left to absorb the economic consequences of crime themselves.
Nigeria should therefore consider publishing regular national and state-level indicators covering:
Police commands should ultimately be assessed not merely by the number of arrests announced at press conferences, but by measurable reductions in victimisation and improvements in property recovery.
Nigeria Needs a National Theft-Loss Index
The Nigerian NewsHouse proposes the development of a National Theft and Property Loss Index.
The NBS, Nigeria Police Force and other relevant institutions should establish a methodology capable of estimating annually:
the number of property crimes, monetary value of assets stolen, value recovered, geographic distribution, categories of property targeted and economic consequences to households and businesses.
It should cover urban and rural Nigeria.
It should capture homes, farms, markets, businesses, vehicles, telecommunications equipment and public infrastructure.
Most importantly, the results should be publicly available.
What gets measured gets seen. What gets seen can be managed.
This Is About More Than Crime
A country cannot build prosperity merely by helping citizens earn more money.
It must also help them keep what they earn and own.
If millions of Nigerians continuously replace stolen phones, livestock, crops, vehicles, equipment and household possessions, then crime is quietly consuming part of the nation’s disposable income and capital formation.
That makes theft not simply a policing problem.
It is a household welfare problem, an agricultural problem, a business problem, an investment problem and ultimately a national economic problem.
Nigeria has begun measuring the prevalence.
The next step is to measure the cost.
And then government must confront the question that matters most to every victim:
Who is accountable for bringing these numbers down?
The Nigerian NewsHouse Editorial Board
NNH News Corp
Data references in this commentary are principally drawn from the National Bureau of Statistics Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey 2024. Any monetary estimates attributed to NNH are analytical extrapolations and not official NBS statistics.
The Nigerian NewsHouse | NNH News Corp
