HURIWA asks federal government to reject UK's prisoners' exchange proposal

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused Non-Governmental Organization has Yesterday asked the Federal Government to reject the recently proposed prisoners’ exchange programme of the United Kingdom’s foreign and commonwealth office[FCO] whereby some eight hundred Nigerian-born but British based and convicted prisoners could be transferred to serve out their terms in Nigerian prisons.

Recently, national dailies in Nigeria reported that the United Kingdom is desperate to repatriate over eight hundred Nigerian prisoners serving various terms in British prison facilities for sex, drug, immigration and other minor offences. Specifically, the United Kingdom’s foreign and commonwealth office [FCO] recently invited some Nigerian Federal legislators and the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Prison service with the sole aim of hastening the prisoners’ exchange. The Nigerian delegation was led by the senate committee Chairman on Interior Mr. Olalekan Mustapha [from Ogun East Senatorial zone on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party].

The Rights Group in a media statement endorsed by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and made available to Newsmen condemned the attempt by the British officials to coerce their Nigerian counterparts to accede to the Prisoners’ exchange programme even without the necessary legal framework and of course without the consent of the Nigerians detained in the respective British Prison facilities for offences they committed in the course of their stay in the United Kingdom.

HURIWA stated that the plot by the British Government to surreptitiously and cleverly convince the Nigerian Government with phantom promises of handsome financial lifeline in order for Nigeria to accede to the UK’s prisoners’ exchange proposal in the shortest possible time ought to be rejected because quiet apart from the abundant facts that going ahead with the prisoners’ exchange violates the subsisting law in the United Kingdom which requires as a matter of necessity that prisoners serving their terms of conviction in any of the United Kingdoms’ prison facilities must offer voluntary consent before they could be transferred to another jurisdiction or country. The Rights Group also stated that the subsisting law in Nigeria regarding the operations of the Nigeria Prisons does not allow for Prisoners convicted in foreign jurisdictions to serve out their terms in Nigeria.

HURIWA stated thus; ‘’ We in the Human Rights community in Nigeria reject in totality, the sinister plot by the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth office to use Nigeria as the dumping ground for prisoners who allegedly commit offences in Britain instead of allowing them to serve out their terms in the country where such offences were committed in the first place. Will the United Kingdom also freely transfer to Nigeria’s treasury all the taxes paid into the British treasury by the hundreds of thousands of credible Nigerian expatriate workers who are working so hard to develope the economy of the United Kingdom? Why should the United Kingdom pick and chose the type of burden to transfer to Nigeria because of their internal economic constraints?’’

The Rights Group reminded the Nigerian authority that going ahead with the UK’s proposal on the prisoners’ exchange will violate the Nigerian Prison Act and section 12 of the 1999 constitution which makes it mandatory that the National Assembly’s consent and approval must be obtained before any bilateral agreement between Nigeria and another country could validly be passed. HURIWA also warned that the terrible inhumane condition of the prison facilities in Nigeria will invariably lead to discontent and possible prisoners’ revolt should the Nigerian and United Kingdom’s Government go ahead with the illegal prisoners’ exchange even as Nigeria could face several cases of Human Rights violations by the Nigerian British based prisoners’ if they are repatriated without their democratic and voluntary consent.