As the Muslims all over the
world round off the year’s Ramadan fasting,
the Muslims Right Concern (MURIC) has
called on President Muhammadu Buhari to
pay attention to the state of Nigeria’s prisons
and the inmates.
While noting that the country’s prisons were
notorious for being overcrowded, dirty and
unfit for human habitation, MURIC which
observed since Ramadan is a season that
evokes humanitarian feelings among mankind,
called the attention of present administration
to the plight of prison inmates.
The group in a statement issued Thursday in
Lagos by its Director, Professor Ishaq
Akintola, pointed out “Exempli gratia, Olokuta
Prison in Ondo State which has capacity for
160 prisoners now has about 688 inmates.
Port Harcourt prison in Rivers State which
was designed to take only 804 prisoners
currently has about 2,900. Prisoners sleep in
turn. Meals served in the prisons are not only
too small, they are not even good enough for
dogs. The amount allocated for each prisoner
for meal per day is unprintable”.
The situation MURIC restated was not only
pathetic, but dehumanizing, adding that
contrary to international best practices, the
Nigerian prison system had become an
institution for the devaluation of Allah-given
fundamental human rights.
“Most prisons in the country have therefore
become recruitment grounds for criminals and
people jailed for minor offences or kept in jail
while awaiting trial end up graduating as
gang leaders or come out of prison
as numero uno enemies of society. It is very
sad that many inmates spend years awaiting
trial. Nigerian prisons have thus become
factories for speedy and mass production of
criminals. Little wonder, therefore, that crime
increases on a daily basis as prison
‘graduates’ besiege society for their pound of
flesh.
“MURIC denounces the long delays in trials
throughout Nigeria. We believe that speedy
trials are possible if the Federal Government
can introduce Court-in-prison adjudication
method whereby court houses are built inside
prison walls. This will eliminate the disturbing
incidence of inability to arraign suspects in
court due to traffic jam or lack of prison
vehicle to move them. Court-in-prison
method will also reduce if not totally eliminate
the incidence of suspects escaping en
route the courts or within the court premises.
Prison authorities are advised to ensure that
bullion vans used to convey prisoners to
court are well ventilated”, the group advised.
The group advised that prisons in hot
climates like Bauchi, Sokoto and Maiduguri
should be equipped with a central air-
conditions system, while the obnoxious
practice of transferring prisoners targeted for
special punishment to such hot climates,
which it alleged, were always politically
motivated, should be discontinued forthwith.
In addition, MURIC advised that more prisons
should be built, while the old and new ones
should be well equipped with good facilities
that could befit human existence and grant
respect for the dignity of the “homo sapien”.
Similarly, it counseled that additional judges
should also be appointed, so as to check
bottlenecks in the trial of awaiting-trial
inmates, as well as judges to adopt
preference for light and affordable fines for
lesser offences instead of imprisonment which
result in choking the prisons’ capacities.
The organization also offered that judges
should consider the pronouncement of
suspended sentences for light offences and
people who were fined little amounts of
money between N3000 and N10000 should be
given at least one week respite to pay instead
of clamping them in jail because there was
nobody in court to assist them, warning that
the Nigerian prison system should not be
made to look like the rich waging war on the
poor.
While advising that Nigerian judges should
desist from pronouncing ridiculous judgments,
MURIC cited instance, of a judge in Otta, Ogun
State, last week who sentenced a man to one
month in jail for stealing seven pieces of meat
and another jurist who jailed an accused for
stealing one tuber of yam. This, the group
challenged contradicted the principles of
natural justice, especially with respect to a
politician who stole billions of naira, yet fined
less than ten percent of the amount he stole.
In view of the shortcomings, the group urged
FG to embark on aggressive decongestion of
prisons as well as advised that the Chief
Judges in the states could set up special Task
Forces on Prison Congestion (STAFOP).
The statement also stated Judges serving in
the STAFOP could routinely visit prisons in
the state and administer clemency on a
weekly basis until the prisons become
habitable and run on normal capacity.
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