By Evelyn Usman

President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria, AISSON Dr. Ona Ekhomu, has called for the adoption of scientific approach in policing, if the rise in crime and criminality must be addressed in Nigeria.

Speaking at the 2018 Nigerian Air Force Provost Conference, held in Abuja, Thursday, Ekhomu , also charged the Directorate of Air Provost to adopt innovative preventive strategies, as well as detective strategies and order maintenance strategies in policing.

He also, called for the setting up of a modern crime laboratory in the Nigerian Air Force, that would be capable of carrying out latent fingerprint comparisons, ballistics identification, toxicology tests, chemistry analysis and also trace evidence analysis on crime scene evidence.

He said : “ “Fingerprint evidence, DNA evidence or blood evidence can put a criminal at a murder scene and thus lead to his conviction. In confession – led policing, the suspects recant their confessions when they are no longer under police control.

“ A forensic infrastructure that will support the new paradigm of scientific policing includes technology-based patrolling, recorded interviews and interrogation, acceptance by other police agencies, the courts, politicians and the general public.

He said: “Forensic science requires a tribe or an epistemic community of dedicated professionals. The patrol man must preserve the crime scene as he met it. The criminalistics team must race to the scene and record/process it in an accurate manner. Evidence secured at the scene must enter a reliable chain of custody which must not be broken until trial. The lab doing the forensic data analysis must have good skills, credentials and reputation. Analysis of forensic results must be done competently and knowledgeably without bias.

“Bringing in space age forensics into antediluvian court systems will simply not work. So, while policing might lead the change, other elements of society must be carried along to create a self-supporting tower of a knowledge system that is resilient and capable of meeting the needs of the Nigerian Society”, he added.

Noting that policing in Nigeria had several challenges including a large variety of aggressors, scarce financial resources for policing, and lack of a credible criminal database, he therefore, called for training and retraining of policing personnel,even as he urged security agencies in Nigeria to eschew what he described as silo mentality in order to increase cooperation and collaboration across agencies.

The President of AISSON later presented a Distinguished Leadership Award to the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique B. Abubakar for the leading role played by the Air force in the battle against domestic terrorism and insurgency.