Ever wondered and pondered how the heck members of the Nigerian Police Force have been managing to carried out criminal investigations, including investigation of crime scenes, solving crimes and charging suspects to the court for decades now without the force having any forensic equipment, let alone personnel who knows about forensic science?
The thought boggles the mind, but that is what the Nigerian Police Force has been doing for over 53 years of policing Nigeria and Nigerians.
The ancient world lacked forensic practices, which naturally made it easier and aided criminals to escape punishment. Due to the fact that there was no forensic, Criminal investigations and trials relied on forced confessions and witnesses testimonies.
Saddening, while the world had moved forward in welcoming and embracing forensic in carrying out criminal investigations, the Nigeria Police Force still remains trapped in the ancient world, thus torture, forced confessions, blackmail of suspects continue to be the practice. It is also reason political murders continue to remain unsolved.
Forensic science (often known as forensics) is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences and technologies investigate situations after the fact, and to establish what occurred based on collected evidence. This is especially important in law enforcement where forensics is done in relation to criminal or civil law.
In the United States there are over 12,000 Forensic Science technicians, as of 2010. Forensic science plays an important role in the investigation of serious crimes. One of the first significant achievements in the field was the development of techniques for identifying individuals by their fingerprints.
Fingerprinting was originally used to establish and to make readily available the criminal records of individual offenders, but it quickly came to be widely used as a means of identifying the perpetrators of particular criminal acts. Most major police forces maintain collections of fingerprints that are taken from known criminals in order to identify them later should they commit other crimes. The FBI, for example, reportedly held millions of prints in its electronic database at the beginning of the 21st century. Fingerprints found at crime scenes thus can be matched with fingerprints in such collections.
The development in the 1980s of computerized databases for the electronic storage and rapid searching of fingerprint collections has enabled researchers to match prints much more quickly.
Since becoming reliably available in the late 1980s, DNA fingerprinting of biological evidence (e.g., hair, sperm, and blood) can exclude a suspect absolutely or establish guilt with a very high degree of probability.
Many other substances, such as fibres, paper, glass, and paint, can yield considerable information under microscopic or chemical analysis. Fibres discovered on the victim or at the scene of the crime can be tested to determine whether they are similar to those in the clothing of the suspect. Documents can be revealed as forgeries on the evidence that the paper on which they were written was manufactured by a technique not available at the time to which it allegedly dates.
The refractive index of even small particles of glass may be measured to show that a given item or fragment of glass was part of a particular batch manufactured at a particular time and place. On the Nigerian Police website, it claims to have a forensic science laboratory. According to the site: “The section is headed by a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP Ovie Oyakomino). It deals with the application of science to law. It employs highly developed technology to uncover scientific evidence relevant to criminal investigation. It has the following functional units: Crime Scene: Undertakes visit to crime scenes, photograph and make sketch of the scene, search for exhibits, process invisible to be visible and obtain the exhibits for analysis by other units. b. Chemistry: Undertakes physical examination and chemical analysis of materials using different equipments and/or chemical materials including powders and liquid for their composition. c. Biology: Undertakes visual, physical and microscopic examination of biological materials like hairs, fibers, plants, leaves for identification purposes. d. Ballistics: Examination of firearms, empty cartridges, shells and bullets for prohibition, state of functionality and identification or matching of shells and/or bullets with suspects firearms. e. Serology/DNA: Identification and typing of biological materials/stains like blood, semen for their origin. f. Fingerprints: Obtains biometrics and bio-data of suspects into database, conducts search of electronic database for match of prints recovered from crime scenes for identification purpose. g. Disputed Documents: Undertakes examination of documents using different light sources and equipments for forgery, alteration, erasure, etc.”
If the section truly exists in the Nigeria Police Force, it is yet to be used to solve any crime. Indeed, if exists, there also won’t be many unsolved crimes and innocent suspects won’t be killed needlessly in the quest to make them confess. Why that section is included in the police site, is yet unclear.
It is however noteworthy, that the Nigeria Police Force are beginning to gathered and take fingerprints of criminals arrested and taken to the State Criminal Investigations Department(SCID), Panti, Yaba, Lagos and Force CID, Alagbon close obalende, Lagos.
According to a police source, even policemen arrested or held for commissions of crimes are also fingerprinted. The question however is what are the police gathering the fingerprints for, if they have no means of using it to nab a suspected criminal?.
For instance, last year, a policeman was arrested for robbery and this year, 2013, he reported to duty, at the station, where he was first arrested for robbery, to resume duty. The police corporal, identified as Jerome, was said to have been serving in Mopol 2, Keffi when he was arrested for robbery in 2012.
He was arrested by SARS Ikeja and interrogated by them. A year after his arrest, Jerome reported to SARS, with police signal, posting him to the same SARS that had earlier investigated him.
The signal further showed that he had been working with Zone 2, Police Command, Onikan, Lagos State.
The first person to recognize and identified him was his Investigating Police Officer (IPO), who investigated the robbery and found him guilty.
The IPO quickly alerted the Officer in charge of SARS, Abba Kyarri.
Kyarri was not the only worried policeman at SARS over Jerome’s transfer to SARS. The different teams working under Kyarri also insisted that their lives were not safe as long as Jerome is allowed to work in that Unit.
Jerome was arrested a year ago, after he went to smoke Indian hemp at Ipondo, Ikeja, and picked two boys to go to rob with him.
The three went on a motorbike and made way their way to Oba Akran. They were said to have succeeded in the robbery and we already getting away, but policemen, attached to Area F command, Ikeja, had received a distress about the robbery and were already on their way.
The police chased the bike riders and rammed into their motorbikes with their patrol van, forcing the robbers to fall and stop. The trio was arrested. Jerome was identified by his police identity card, found in his pocket.
While the other two were charged to court, Jerome was supposed to go for an orderly room trial and later dismissed, but it apparently didn’t turn out that way.
A police said that Jerome manoeuvred his trial.
Everyone thought Jerome had been dismissed, thus the shock on the faces of SARS men when he came to report for duty.
Deputy Commissioner, Administration, has ordered for another orderly room trial for Jerome. Meanwhile, the corporal had gone back to Zone 2, to continue with his police work.
The question is this: if Jerome was arrested and assumed his fingerprints were collected, how come the police database (if there is a database), did not pinpoint that Jerome is a rogue policeman?
The section is just a name, void of any forensic activities. Why the police are claiming to have such a section, which does not work, is quite unclear, but probably to create a section/office for a policeman.
Early this year, the Commissioner of Police, in charge of the Special Fraud Unit, (Tunde Ogunsakin addressed journalists, revealing that some foreigners would be assisting his unit in building the first ever forensic laboratory in the police. The new forensic laboratory which is to be constructed at N77 million is to be sited at the Headquarters of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Milverton Road, Ikoyi, Lagos.
But while police are dilly-dallying over introducing forensic in criminal investigations, its sister body, the EFCC had already gone as far to submit forensic evidences in court trials.
A forensic analyst with EFCC, Muktar Bello, who is also a witness in the ongoing trial of Joseph Amaechi and 13 others, over their alleged illegal oil bunkering on June 18, 2013 told a Federal High Court, Abuja presided over by Justice Evoh Stephen Chukwu, how forensic examination of the mobile phones of the accused persons established their complicity in the crime.
Led in evidence by counsel to EFCC, Austin Emumejakpor, Muktar told the court that he conducted the examination by using a computer running on Microsoft operating system with a cellebrite device.
The device, according to Muktar, is a forensic extraction device commonly used by law enforcement agencies to harvest information from mobile devices. He further explained that the device has an in-built mechanism that protects the integrity of the data extracted which is automatically transferred to a computer.
However, the defence counsel, Rotimi Ojo, contested the admissibility of the document which the prosecution sought to tender as exhibit on the grounds that the document is not the original copy. But Emumejakpor urged the court to discountenance the objection, as the document had been duly certified in line with the provisions of the law.
In his ruling, Justice Chukwu said a certified true copy of any document is admissible in evidence and accordingly admitted same as exhibit.
The spokesman for the Network on Police Reforms in Nigeria (NOPRIN), Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma talked about the effect of policing without forensic: “Contemporary crimes require timely and reliable intelligence and information, not just guns and armoured personnel carriers. Modern crime fighting relies heavily on technology of which forensics is an essential aspect. The reason the Nigeria police and other security agencies have been unable to solve simple- not to talk of high profile crimes- is partly due to political control of the police; but more importantly, due to poor forensic capabilities. If the police can match a crime with a finger print, it will not matter if the owner of the finger print continues to deny or admits. There will also be no need to torture the suspect to extract confession if by forensic evidence; the suspect can be linked to the crime. Without forensic knowledge, skills and facilities, crime investigation in Nigeria will continue to rely on crude methods that violate human rights, such as torture. The government should rehabilitate the existing forensic laboratory and build more. Corruption is at the root of government’s inability to adequately fund, equip and professionalise the police in Nigeria. It is not for lack of resources, but corruption which diverts needed resources and lack of political will to stem corruption and deliver on good governance mandate.”
Princess Olufemi-Kayode Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder, Media Concern Initiative for Women and Children, believed that forensic would help greatly in catching rapists, but especially paedophilias who prey on children.
She added: “The onus of proof in rape cases fall on child victims and adult survivors. This has created a lot of hindrances to cases as scientific evidence aids the process of actualising that there was a crime and so, so person committed the crime. Majority of cases are not adequately investigated and end of discussion is for final police report that goes for prosecution. Badly written reports, which are sent along with the prosecution file. Many cases have evidence of sexual violence, yet there are no accused persons. Forensic assists in producing evidences that holds an accused person liable for a crime.”
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