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The purpose of this study is to explore the contextual determinants of HIV risk among people who inject drugs (PWID) in public settings in Nigeria.

In-depth, individual interviews were conducted with 29 street-based PWID recruited through snowball sampling in Uyo, Nigeria. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, coded and analysed hematically.

Homelessness and withdrawal pains encouraged consumption of drugs in public spaces (e.g. bunks, public parks). Conversely, the benefits of participation in street drug-use scenes, including reciprocity norms that guarantee free drugs during withdrawal and protection during overdose, fostered a preference for public injecting. Although participants recognized the need to inject with sterile syringes, scarcity of syringes compelled them to improvise with old syringes or share syringes, increasing risk for HIV transmission. HIV risk was exacerbated by unlawful and discriminatory policing practices, which deterred possession of syringes and encouraged risky behaviours such as rushing injection and sharing of equipment.

Contextual factors are key determinants of HIV risk for street-based PWID. Implementation of needle and syringe programmes as well as reforming legal frameworks and policing practices to support harm reduction are needed responses.

This is one of very few qualitative studies that explore risk factors for HIV transmission among PWID in West Africa. The focus on scarcity of sterile syringes and HIV risk is unique and has important policy implications.

The purpose of this study is to examine the politics, political economy, and fallout of hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria. Hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drug in Nigeria, such as opioid analgesics, is a very complex and multifaceted one, which usually involves the interplay of many factors and parties.

Policy manuals, official government gazettes (legislations, regulations, Acts and decrees), academic literature and a direct ethnographic observation of events surrounding the regulation of prescription drugs were reviewed and engaged.

The results revealed that Nigerian and global political economy and politics interface to define the direction of the new restrictive opioid policy, with resultant friction between prohibition and consumption. The reviews showed that the overarching “get-tough” and “repressive” policy are not necessarily founded on empirical evidence of an increase in prescription drug sales or use, but more as a product of the interplay of both internal and external politics and the prevailing socioeconomic order.

Instead of borrowing extensively from or being influenced by repressive Western drug laws and perspectives, Nigerian policymakers on prescription opioids should take control of the process by drawing up a home-grown policy that is less intrusive and punitive in nature for better outcomes. A mental sea change is required to understand the intrigues of Western power in Nigeria’s politics and political economy to avoid the continuous symptomatic failure of drug policy.

The politics and economic influence of the United Nations, USA and Western powers, as well as the axiom of moral panic of prescription drugs scares within the Nigerian environment, are particularly significant in the making of the emerging hawkish policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria.

This study aims to assess the direct relationships between internal support and job satisfaction and voluntary assistance and their indirect connections through work–family conflict among Nigerian police officers.

Survey data were collected from police officers in a midsized state police command in Ebonyi state in Nigeria. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the connections between supervisor support, peer support, work–family conflict, job satisfaction and voluntary assistance.

Police officers with stronger supervisor and co-worker support are more inclined to express higher job satisfaction, whereas such support is not linked to officers' willingness to help fellow officers. Work–family conflict mediates the relationship between co-worker support and voluntary assistance. Stronger peer support is accompanied by higher work–family conflict, which then is linked to greater helping behavior.

Despite many studies on police job satisfaction, research on correlates of job satisfaction in an African context remains severely under-investigated. This study represents one of the first attempts to assess police proactive helping behavior and job satisfaction in Nigeria.