A staggering 4,142,174 homes, accounting for 4.8% of households in Nigeria, fell victim to home robberies between May 2023 and April 2024, according to a new report by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The NBS defined home robbery as an incident where “an offender unlawfully enters into a building residence while the occupants are inside with the intent of causing harm or dispossessing them of their properties.”
The data, released in the Crimes Experience and Security Perception Survey, provides a comprehensive look at crime trends across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones.
The North-West zone recorded the highest number of home robbery cases, with 1.06 million incidents, followed by the South-South zone, which saw 811,231 cases. In contrast, the South-West zone reported the lowest number of cases, with 378,252 incidents.
The report highlighted a marginal disparity in robbery prevalence between rural and urban areas. While 5.0% of rural households were affected, 4.7% of urban households experienced similar incidents, revealing that no region is entirely safe from the menace of home invasions.
Cash topped the list of stolen items, with 65.4% of households reporting money loss. This was followed by 55.3% reporting stolen cell phones and 25.5% losing electronic equipment.
Less than half (36.3%) of households that experienced home robberies reported the incidents to the police. Among those who reported, a mere 6.1% managed to recover their stolen properties, underscoring the country’s crime resolution challenges.
The report revealed that 55.7% of affected households faced physical force during the robberies, while 61.6% reported the use of weapons. Knives were the most common weapon, used in 74.7% of cases, followed by guns, which were involved in 57.9% of incidents. Tragically, 4.7% of households reported that at least one person died as a result of the robbery.
The North-West zone not only recorded the highest number of robberies but also reported the most fatalities resulting from these incidents. On the other hand, the *South-West zone*, which reported the fewest robberies, recorded no deaths.
The CESPS report paints a grim picture of security in Nigerian households, particularly in rural areas and the North-West region.
With low reporting rates and minimal recovery of stolen goods, the findings call for urgent measures to strengthen law enforcement and community security initiatives to curb home robberies nationwide.
