The Police Are Not a Debt Recovery Agency
It has become almost routine, a creditor who cannot get their money back heads straight to the nearest police station, writes a petition, and watches the debtor get invited, questioned, and sometimes detained, all without a single day in court. It works, in the sense that frightened debtors often pay up. But "it works" and "it is lawful" are two different questions, and Nigerian courts have answered the second one clearly: no, it is not.
1. What the Police Are Actually For
Section 4 of the Police Act 2020 sets out the duties of the Nigeria Police Force, the prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order, and the protection of life and property. Recovering what one person owes another under a loan agreement, a sale of goods, or a business arrangement gone wrong does not appear anywhere on that list because it was never meant to.
A debt arising from a contract is a civil matter. It becomes a police matter only where the facts disclose an actual crime, for example, where the money was obtained by deliberate deception from the outset, or where goods entrusted to someone were fraudulently converted. The mere fact that a person has not repaid what they owe does not, by itself, turn a civil debt into stealing or obtaining by false pretenses.
2. What the Courts Have Said
The Supreme Court addressed this directly in Diamond Bank Plc v Opara. A bank, unable to resolve a billing dispute with its customer through the ordinary channels, repeatedly reported the customer to the Police and later to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over what was, at bottom, a disagreement about bank charges. The customer sued to enforce his fundamental rights, and the courts up to the Supreme Court agreed with him that using law enforcement agencies to pressure a party in what was essentially a civil and commercial dispute amounted to a violation of that party's right to personal liberty.
The companion case, EFCC v Diamond Bank Plc, went further. The Supreme Court held that the EFCC, too, must scrutinize a complaint before acting on it, and must decline to be used as a debt recovery agency where the underlying dispute is purely commercial. The Court drew a clear line, a disagreement over how much is owed, or whether it is owed at all, is not fraud, it is a contractual dispute, and contractual disputes belong in a courtroom, not an interrogation room.
More recently, the Court of Appeal in Imam v Usman reaffirmed the same principle in the context of a land transaction gone sour, holding that where a civil suit already exists between parties over a disputed transaction, inviting the police to arrest and detain the other side over the same dispute is not a legitimate use of police power and can expose both the complainant and the police to liability for breach of fundamental rights.
3. Why This Rule Exists
I don't think this is simply a technicality the courts have insisted on for its own sake. It reflects something more basic. The power to arrest and detain is one of the most serious powers the Police has, and it was never meant to be handed over to whoever happens to be owed money. If it could be, every landlord, every supplier, every lender would have an incentive to skip the courtroom entirely and let the threat of a police cell do the negotiating. That is not debt recovery, it is private coercion wearing a uniform, and it corrodes the only thing that makes the police's power legitimate in the first place that it is used for the public's protection, not a private party's convenience.
It is also, frankly, unfair to the debtor. Civil court process comes with safeguards, pleadings, evidence, a judge weighing both sides, an appeal if the judgment is wrong. A police cell comes with none of that. A person can be detained on nothing more than one side's unverified petition, with no finding of fact and no chance to properly answer before the pressure is applied.
4. How to Recover Debts Legally
If someone owes you money and will not pay:
Send a formal demand letter. Many debtors pay promptly once a lawyer is involved and a deadline is on paper.
Explore the dispute resolution clause, if your agreement has one, arbitration or mediation can be faster and cheaper than litigation.
Sue in court. Nigerian courts, including the Small Claims Courts now operating in several states, exist precisely to resolve disputes like this, and a court judgment can be enforced through garnishee proceedings, attachment of property, or winding-up proceedings against a corporate debtor, all lawful, all enforceable.
Only report to the police where there is genuine evidence of a crime, not disappointment that a debtor has not paid.
The Takeaway
The police exist to keep the peace and investigate crime, not to pressure people into paying what they owe. If your money is being withheld, the proper, and ultimately more defensible, route is a civil suit, not a petition. A judgment obtained in court can be enforced with the full backing of the law. A debt "recovered" through a police cell can just as easily become a lawsuit against you.
Know the law. Use the right forum.
