• The reality of Crime and criminality have remained enduring features of both pre-modern and civilised society.
• the advent of industrialisation and attended urbanisation has seen an upsurge in crimes,
• the reasons are not limited to the economic inequality embedded in the pattern of distribution and consumption of wealth but also in the weakness and failure of governance.
• Cities and urban areas that have benefitted from industrialisation were inappropriately planned to respond to various challenges of urbanisation.
• They have therefore become centres of crime rather than centres of civilisation. Unfortunately, the ability of policing institutions to ensure security is shrinking daily and crimes continue to rise (Baker,
2010).

• In Lagos, Nigeria, crimes and criminal activities are rampart especially during the military era. However, in the last five years, the Lagos crime story has changed and the climate of fear has reversed. What approach(es) did Lagos used to combat crime and criminality? This paper intends to examine the Lagos strategies with a view of adopting them for the South African cities especially the ones that share similar characteristics with Lagos, Nigeria.
• The paper is therefore divided into different parts; starting from introduction, the paper examines the conceptual issues and follows it with trends of crimes in Lagos, Nigeria and South Africa.
• Other parts deals with the issues of the strategies of public–private security interface (PPSI), and brings in the idea of protective intelligence
(PI) and security situational awareness (SSA).
• Finally the paper offers a detail trend and data on crime reduction in
Lagos and concludes that if adopted, these strategies could go a long way to combat crimes in South Africa.

• Crime: In a sense therefore, a crime is any action or inaction willfully perpetrated by a person or group in violation of criminal law of a state.
• Protective Intelligence: in this context it refers to processed information obtained from a mixture of overt and covert sources and made available in a timely manner to the government or its agencies to inform the formulation and/or implementation of policy or actions to protect and advance national security interests by proactively responding to threats to those interests from actual or potential adversaries.
• Security Situation Awareness: situational awareness is the act and process of recognizing a threat at an early stage and taking measures to avoid it. Being observant of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations is more of an attitude or mindset than it is a hard skill.

• Private-Public Security Interface: The idea of public private security interface embraces effective collaboration and intervention of private corporations, organised private sector with that of government initiative.

• From its global city ranking of 31 st in 1985, Lagos population exploded to 13.4million in year 2000 to become the world’s sixth mega city
• African foremost urban centre and hub of national, regional and global socio-economic activities.
• This large population makes it the second largest city in Africa in terms of population after Cairo and the population is expected to reach 20million by 2020, when Lagos will join the club formed by the world’s ten largest cities.
• To be precise the third largest

• The Formation of the Security Committee
• Establishment of Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF)
• Re-Engineering Police Operational Effectiveness
• Safe City Project [Comprehensive Security Programme]
• Close Circuit Television [CCTV]
• Emergency Numbers ‘767’ and ‘112’
• Operation Mesa (OPMESSA)
• Judicial Reforms
• Publication of Phone Numbers
• Convoy Patrol
• Police Information Box
• Response to Socio-Economic Precipitators of Crime

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•
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• Assault
• Assault
• Kidnapping
• Rape
• Robbery
• Murder
• Satisfaction with state government in crime control

• According to crime statistic in South Africa, there are steady decreases in crimes as recently released 2010 Global Peace Index (GPI) showed.
• However, the country remains one of the least peaceful societies in the world, moving from number 123 out of 144 in 2009, to 121 out of 149 countries in 2010 (Ratele, 2010).
• The results of the 2010 GPI confirms other studies that have indicated that
South Africa has some of the highest rates of crimes and violence in the world, even though there has been a steady fall in the per capita murder rate in the country since the advent of democracy (ibid).
• It is therefore important that the crime prevention strategises need to be re evaluated. While the recent police civilian oversight legislation presented to parliament provides a key example of an attempt to do things differently (Newham, 2010). Nevertheless,
• This is the more reason why in the opinion of this writer that the Lagos model may serve as a needed tonic to put crimes at its lowest level.

• This paper has specifically examined the Lagos crime control experience but other programme of action can be employed to specifically address the crime situation in African urban cities.
• Nevertheless, Baker (2010) came up with two major suggestions in this respect. These are the issue of the state policing institutions that are too weak to undertake the task of crime prevention and investigation by themselves and the roles of the non-state actors who currently provide the majority of everyday policing in cities.
• The two ideas stated above by Baker are similar to the ones stated in this paper. The interface between public and non-state actors policing is Private-Public Security Interface (PPSI) captured in the
Lagos experience. While the procedure for interaction between the two should be comprehensively drawn to reflect the values of the cities it is designed for, it must nevertheless be able to incorporate the ideas of protective intelligence and situation security awareness.