The Lagos State Police Command has said it cannot identify the nine suspected kidnappers it killed in the Mushin area on July 4.

Benjamin Hundeyin, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, said that it was enough to find guns and ammunition in the suspects’ possession and putting names to their faces was irrelevant.

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FIJ reached out to Hundeyin to be sure if any of the nine suspects had been identified on July 14. Hundeyin refused to answer his calls. He asked FIJ to send a text instead.

FIJ also sent a text message, but Hundeyin still did not respond. He did not answer phone calls a week after the text.

The police claimed that two of the suspected kidnappers survived the July 4 gunfight and escaped with gunshot wounds. It has also yet to share more details about those suspects.

Nigeria’s law enforcement agencies continue to handle criminal identification with levity. For many, including the police, a criminal’s personal data becomes redundant information after their death.

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Sometimes, law enforcement agencies understand that data can be put into good use in further investigation but come short of retrieving it due to limited capability.

“In a country like Nigeria, where the technological advancement needed to increase accuracy in the use of DNA evidence to identify suspects is not available, the traditional visual identification procedure of criminals still holds strong,” Osayemwenre Omoroghomwan, a scholar studying police behaviour, notes.

“However, researchers have long noted that virtual identification may often not be reliable, thereby leading to wrongful convictions of identified persons by the victims or witnesses.”

Sometimes, the family members of suspects never find out about their deaths because the police fail to identify them.

Identifying dead suspects could also help find their surviving partners in crime.