Assessment of public awareness and willingness for establishment/storage of DNA profile in a national DNA database in Nigeria

Abstract

One prominent aspect of forensic deoxyribonucleic acid testing is the establishment and expansion of centralized national forensic DNA databases and body of evidence have continued to emerge, demonstrating the extensive efficiency and effectiveness of the DNA database in assisting criminal investigation globally. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine public awareness on Forensic DNA Database and the willingness for storage of DNA profiles. The design used in this study is the survey research design and the sample size of this study was a total number of five hundred University of Benin students drawn from our population for empirical investigation. The study adopted descriptive statistics which involves the use of frequency and percentage. The result of this study revealed that majority of the respondent demonstrated an adequate level of awareness and knowledge (71.2%), showed good knowledge on the function of a national forensic DNA database (54.4%), demonstrated increased level of awareness and knowledge on the benefit of a national forensic DNA database (44.8%), and revealed that 422 (84.4%) were willing for the storage of their profiles in the national forensic DNA database.The study also observed that a vast proportion of the respondents indicated that fear of violation of individual’s privacy was the only barrier they considered for the storage of DNA profiles in the National Database and our observations provides a good a basis for reviewing and implementing policies that find a reasonable balance based on the creation of moral and ethical spectrum involving professionals in the area of forensics, law enforcement and the public, in particular, social groups which are less involved in genetics.