Thirty-seven Nigerians who died in a government detention cell now have names. Twenty-four officers are in custody. The curfew that followed their deaths has already been lifted. No charges have been publicly announced, and nobody has told their families how they actually died.

On the night of September 15 and into September 16, officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps ran what the Corps itself called a "burst operation" against illegal mining. The operation targeted the Wushishi Estate and Lukoto areas of Minna, Niger State's capital. Dozens of people were arrested. By the early hours of September 17, 37 of them were dead inside an NSCDC detention facility.

For five days, they were a number. Niger State Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago confirmed the toll at a press conference and declared three days of mourning. The NSCDC's Niger State commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, said early on that the deaths looked like a disease outbreak. Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo suspended him before that theory had been tested.

On September 21, the International Human Rights Commission released a list of all 37 names. An IHRC official, Awaisu Giwa, said his organisation had gone directly to the General Hospital in Minna, where the bodies were deposited. The hospital's Chief Medical Director authorised a mortuary attendant to hand over the records. Thirty-three names came from that list. Four more, families of the missing brought to the IHRC themselves after not finding their relatives named anywhere.

What killed them is still not settled, and the accounts on offer don't agree with each other. Aniviye's own early theory was a specific disease, diphtheria. Bago has said the cause has not been officially established and that investigators are also looking at possible exposure to lead or other hazardous chemicals used in mining. A survivor, Dauda Shehu, told the Associated Press that dozens of people had been packed into a single cell that couldn't safely hold them. A separate survivor alleged that an unidentified substance, which he described as smelling like perfume, was sprayed into the cell before people began collapsing, in a video that circulated after a visit by the Interior Minister. None of these accounts has been confirmed against the others. As of today, the state's own position is that no cause has been determined.

The accounts also differ on how many people were being held, though not all the figures are necessarily describing the same thing. Bago has put the number originally detained at 67. Shehu, the survivor, recalled around 65 people packed into the cell where he was held. Earlier reporting, before the toll was confirmed at 37, carried a provisional figure of 33 dead. Nobody in government has reconciled these numbers publicly.

What has moved, and moved fast, is the machinery around the deaths, not the deaths themselves. Twenty-four NSCDC personnel, including the suspended Aniviye, are now in custody at the Corps' Abuja headquarters, up from an initial 21. President Bola Tinubu ordered a full investigation and said suspension is not a substitute for actually establishing legal responsibility. The Federal Government has set up a 10-member independent committee. The Niger State Government has its own panel. The police, separately, sent Inspector-General Olatunji Disu to Minna, where he met Bago and pledged a police-led inquiry alongside everyone else's. Senior lawyer Femi Falana has publicly called on the Niger and Ondo state attorneys-general to prosecute those responsible, a demand that assumes the investigations now underway will actually name someone.

By Monday, the state had several investigations running at once. What it still didn't have was a public answer. A proliferation of panels can look like the system taking the deaths seriously. It can also be a way of making sure no single body has to be the one that answers first.

Falana's call for prosecution didn't stop at Minna. In the same statement, he named a second case, the deaths of 48 people in Ondo State after suspected poisoning, and urged the attorneys-general of both states to prosecute, not just investigate. His point wasn't that the two incidents are connected. It's that panels forming and suspensions being announced have not, historically, reliably ended in prosecution in either state. That is the standard the Niger State investigation is now being measured against.

For readers watching this from outside Nigeria, the stake is not abstract. An ID check, a road stop, an anti-illegal-mining raid are ordinary enforcement encounters that any Nigerian visiting home moves through without a second thought. What happened in Minna shows what the system's default response looks like once a citizen is already in its custody. The state was fast with the curfew, fast with the suspensions, fast with the prayers. The answer to what actually killed 37 people in its custody is still pending.

The curfew Bago imposed on September 18 was relaxed on Monday, three days later, after three days of prayers for the dead. Reuters reported that security forces fired live rounds as protests over the deaths turned violent in Minna, with some protesters carrying sticks, machetes and hunting rifles and attempting to set fire to government buildings. At least one body was reported lying in the street during the unrest. The streets of Minna are calmer today than they were last Friday. The families of the 37 named yesterday are not further along toward knowing what actually happened to their relatives than they were on the morning the bodies were found.