We are delighted to announce that ODID’s Olly Owen has won an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Celebrating Impact Prize for research that is contributing to reform of the Nigerian Police Force. Olly won second prize in the Outstanding Early Career Impact category

Public security issues are among the biggest challenges to Nigeria’s consolidating democracy and the Nigerian Police Force is central to managing and responding to those challenges. However, there is little existing research on the conditions or performance of the force, and where such research does exist, the voices of police officers themselves are largely absent

Responding to this gap, Olly’s doctoral work involved an institutional ethnographic study of the Nigerian Police Force. He visited 33 sites across the country, including spending 16 months in one division in North-Central Nigeria, using an approach that combined participant observation fieldwork with historical, analytical and interview research with officers past and present.

His findings, which focus on recruitment, training, everyday working practices, morale and structural issues, were read by the senior leadership of the Nigerian Police Force, and the Inspector-General of the force has mandated national heads of departments responsible for recruitment, training, management and working practices to examine the findings and make written submissions for policy responses

In addition, his research has been used in training programmes run by Justice for All, a policing assistance project funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), and his work on police governance has been taken up by a Nigerian NGO, the CLEEN foundation, in their work with the regulatory Police Service Commission. He has recently been working with ODID DPhil student Daniel Agbiboa to support the work of the Nigeria Police Forum within London's Metropolitan Police.

Olly’s impact work was supported by an ESRC-funded Impact Acceleration award.

The prizes were announced at a ceremony in London on 24 June. Olly will use the prize to support ongoing public debates on police reform in Nigeria.

Find out more and watch a video about Olly’s work.