DISCORDANT COUPLE IN NATIONAL SERVICE: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NIGERIA POLICE’S CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION SUPERSTRUCTURE AND ITS USE OF FORENSIC SCIENCE

Abstract

Looking around, it will only take modesty to admit that the police authority in Nigeria has a solution to the multifaceted security challenges bedeviling the country since about 2014, soon after over 200 Chibok school girls were kidnapped in Borno State, the North-Eastern part of Nigeria. The continued experience of killings in the North-central part of Nigeria has left an average Nigerian without hope. Kidnapping is no longer limited to the North-West or South-South part of Nigeria, but now occurs in every part of the country. Kidnapping is now a volume crime. Every conscious observer would question the mystery behind the commission of these crimes and the method of collating crime record data in the country. This study will be different from a failed state theory, but the security apparatus in the country have done very little to allay the fears of an average Nigerian. Despite the popularity of Forensic investigation of crime at the international scene in stemming the tides of criminality in cosmopolitan environments such as Nigeria, our country is yet to embrace the use of forensic education in combating crime. This paper critically reviewed the criminal investigation of the security apparatus of the country vis-à-vis the use of forensic science. This research therefore proposes the adoption of modern forensic technology in the investigation of crimes generally in Nigeria and especially the volume crimes.