Lagos State DNA and Forensic Centre, has received the ISO/IEC17025:2017 accreditation by the American Association for Laboratory Acc, lreditation (A2LA) for forensic DNA testing.

This followed the rigorous and successful completion of theA2LA’s physical inspection of the laboratory, audit of standard operating procedures and evaluation of the centre’s quality management system according to “Forensic Examination Accreditation Program testing standards and requirements”.

State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Adeniji Kazeem, said the accreditation was an international recognition and testament of the state-of-the-art technologies available at the centre, and the competency and quality of work performed by the forensic scientists.”

According to Kazeem, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, “with this accreditation, the centre has joined the very few laboratories in the world accredited under the latest 2017 (ISO/IEC 17025) standards in the area of forensic DNA analysis and serology, accredited organizations all around the world understand the value of providing high quality services that are backed by defensible data.”

Kazeem said the centre’s scope of accreditation covered the performance of several tests, including Human Blood Identification, Seminal Fluid Identification, Spermatozoa Identification, Forensic DNA Casework Analyses using Gene Mapper ID-X and Nuclear DNA Database Analyses using Small Pond Database DNA Profiling and Matching System.

The Lagos DNA and Forensic Centre, according to him, has been working closely with the Police, the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team, Ministry of Health and Non-Government Organizations to enhance public safety in Lagos State.

He enjoined all Lagosians to take full advantage of the latest development in the Justice delivery and public safety agenda by leveraging the centre’s capabilities and continue to partner with government to enable them to maintain security, law and order in the State.