Date Published: 06/21/11

Prisons should be more of reformative centres -Akpabio

Authorities of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) have been charged to make the country’s prisons more of reformative than punitive centres.

Akwa Ibom State governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, gave the charge when top management officers of Prisons Staff College, Barnawa, Kaduna, on a study tour of the state, paid a courtesy call on him at the Government House, Uyo.

The governor, who was represented by his deputy, Mr Nsima Ekere, said prisons all over the world were meant to reform and train inmates to be useful citizens when they return to society and charged the prison authorities to fashion out courses to this end.

He also called on the Federal Government to improve the standard of prisons across the country and recommended that the ultra-modern prisons built by his administration at Ikot Ekpene be adopted as a model in line with the United Nations standard.

Chief Akpabio said, apart from the construction of a new Ikot Ekpene Prison, the state government had also intervened in rehabilitating other dilapidated Federal Government facilities like roads, schools and hospitals.

He restated the determination of his government to establish one industry in each of the 31 local government areas in the state to create employment for products of the free education programme of his administration and other qualified indigenes of the state.