Aba, Abia State and the Janguza Tannery Factory, Kano, Kano State are
set to kick off after the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory
Commission (ICRC) handed the service a certificate of compliance. At the
presentation of Full Business Case (FBC) Compliance Certificate to the
Controller General of NCoS, Ja’afaru Ahmed, at the NCoS headquarters
on Wednesday, the ICRC’s Director General, Chidi Izuwah said the
factories will yield at least N5.089 billion investments. He said the
two factories will save the huge FOREX for importation of uniforms and
shoes when they become functional. Izuwah said; “the project will
bring an immediate investment of N5.089 billion made up of 80% debt and
20% equity with “Zero” financial contribution by the government.
This would lead to the creation of 1,290 direct jobs, multiples of
indirect jobs locally and savings on foreign exchange demand to procure
uniforms abroad amongst other significant benefits to the country.” He
also said the proposed PPP arrangement between NSC and Erojim
Investments Limited (a local company) and its technical partner, Poly
Technologies Inc., Beijing, China, is aimed at establishing a
world-class factory, using the most modern technology and quality inputs
to produce high quality shoe, garments and leather products to meet the
demand of NCoS and other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)
whose personnel wear uniforms and make use of other accessories. Engr.
Izuwah listed more benefits of the factories to include: “The shoe,
garment and tannery factories are the best remedy for unemployment
because they are labour intensive and create jobs for the masses.”
Nigerian Correctional Service begins drugs production for inmates Need
for Executive Order to decongest correctional centres According to him;
“Nigeria’s large population, strategic geographical location, ECOWAS
membership, and government’s incentives for the shoe and garment
industries, makes this investment compelling.” The NCoS Controller
General said the two factories are to be built under a public-private
partnership under a build, operate and transfer (BOT) arrangement.
“The private investors will run the facilities for 20 years before
handing them over to the service. “They [Erojim] will have to train
our men within that period. “For now, the profit will be shared 70/30
in favour of Erojim,” he disclosed. However, the contract agreement is
to be approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) before it can
become active.
President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Nigerian Correctional Service Bill
into law. Former Senior Special Assistant to the President on National
Assembly Matters (Senate), Ita Enang disclosed this. The Act repeals the
Nigerian Prisons Service Act. The Nigerian Prisons Service will now be
called the Nigerian Correctional Service. According to him, the
Correctional Service comprises Custodial and Non-Custodial Service.
The presidential aide explained that the Non-Custodial Service was
intended to be a place of reformation and that the person sentenced
under this will not stay in custody but will have remediation. The
President, he said, has also signed Federal Universities of Agriculture
(Amendment No.2) Act, 2019. On the Nigerian Correctional Service Bill,
2019, Enang said: “This Act repeals the Prisons Acts and changes the
name from Nigeria Prisons Service to Nigerian Correctional Service,
otherwise known as ‘the Correctional Service’. “There are,
according to the Act, two main faculties of the Correctional Service,
namely:
(a) Custodial Service
(b) Non-custodial Service
“The Custodial Service is to: (a) custody and take control of persons
legally interned in safe, secure and humane conditions. (b) Conveying
remand persons to and from courts in motorised formations;
“(c) Identifying the existence and causes of anti-social behaviours of
inmates;
“(d) Conducting risk and needs assessment aimed at developing
appropriate correctional treatment methods for reformation,
rehabilitation and reintegration;
“(e) Implementing reformation and rehabilitation programmes to enhance
the reintegration of inmates back into the society.
“(f) Initiating behaviour modification in inmates through the
provision of medical, psychological, spiritual and counselling services
for all offenders, including violent extremists;
“(g) Empowering inmates through the deployment of educational and
vocational skills training programmes, and facilitating incentives and
income generation through Custodial Centres, farms and industries;
“(h) Administering borstal and related institutions;
(I) Providing support to facilitate the speedy disposal of cases of
persons awaiting trial.”
He said the Act, in Section 12 (2) (c), further states “that where an
inmate sentenced to death has exhausted all legal procedures for appeal
and a period of 10 years has elapsed without execution of the sentence,
the Chief Judge may commute the sentence of death to life
imprisonment”.
According to him, Section 12 (8) empowers the State Controller of the
Service to reject more intakes of inmates, where it is apparent that the
correctional centre in question is filled to capacity.
Enang said non-custodial faculty of the Correctional Service is
responsible for the administration of non-custodial measures, namely:
Community Service, probation, parole, restorative justice measures and
such other measures as a court of competent jurisdiction may order.
He added: “Restorative justice measures approved in the Act include
victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community
mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed necessary
pre-trial, trial during imprisonment or even post-imprisonment
stages.”
Asked the guarantee that the prisoner will get what is due to him, Enang
said: “Because the law has stated that the money will be divided into
three places – the person who produces will take one third, the
prisoner will take one third and the last third will go to consolidated
revenue fund of the federation.”
On Prisons database, he said: “The thing is when you enter; your
particulars are registered in the prison system. The database cannot be
faulted because it has your fingerprints and other particulars.
“The essence of the Bill is to ensure there is enough funding for the
service that will take care of the welfare of the inmates and workers.
“So, any alleged corrupt practices in terms of ration will be
eliminated. The Act also provides that the service retains a percentage
of what they generate in addition to budgetary provision to work with,
so corrupt practices will be eliminated.”
The Nigerian prisons now known as Nigerian Correctional Services are
very congested, and the development has become a major concern to the
prison authorities, the judiciary and the police. Over the years,
inmates have outnumbered the capacity of prison cells and facilities at
the prisons are being overstretched. Nigeria has 228 prisons housing 68,
259 inmates. 145 prisons are for convicts while 83 serve as satellite
prison camps. There are also three Borstal institutions for juvenile
offenders. The two types of convicts’ prisons operational in Nigeria
are the Maximum and the Medium Security Prisons. The Satellite Prisons
are built to serve as intermediate camps for the areas with courts that
are far from the main prisons. But the cells in most of the prisons are
old and tiny. A recent visit to prisons in Kaduna, Enugu, Oko and Kano
revealed that apart from being old and small, the cells are also
overcrowded. The Ikoyi Prisons in Lagos State which has capacity for 800
inmates currently has over 1,500 people awaiting trial. The Kuje Prisons
in Abuja has more than 600 inmates, including 85 convicts and 585
awaiting trial.
Amnesty International, in its 2008 report, declared that Nigeria’s
prisons are filled with people whose human rights are systematically
violated. It stated that 65 per cent of the inmates are awaiting trial.
Most of them, the organization said, have been waiting on that list for
many years because they are too poor to pay lawyers. It is only one out
seven of the people awaiting trial that have private legal
representation, the report noted. According to an African Focus bulletin
of 2008, the Nigerian Government has not implemented the recommendations
of many study groups and presidential committees over the recent years.
It said that few of the promises made by the Nigerian government have
been carried out and this has led to the current problems being
experienced in the country’s prisons. “The opening of prisons to
non-governmental organizations has had a positive effect: NGOs bring
food, educational materials and lawyers into the prisons. They organize
religious activities, offer counseling and teach inmates. However, NGOs
are not primarily responsible for the welfare of the inmates. It is time
the Nigerian government faced up to its responsibilities for those in
its prisons,” the bulletin stated. Studies revealed that those
problems in the prison system still persist today. Some concerned
Nigerians attributed the upsurge in the congestion of prisons to
indiscriminate arrest of innocent citizens by the police.
This overcrowding could have negative effects on the physical and mental
health of inmates. Since there are not enough resources to take care of
inmates, malnutrition and poor health facilities become prevalent. This
also increases the inmates’ susceptibility to assault among
themselves. In fact, according to amnesty international, Nigeria’s
prisons are filled with people whose human rights are systematically
violated. Approximately 65 per cent of the inmates are awaiting trial
most of whom have been waiting for their trial for years. Most of the
people in behind bars are too poor to be able to pay lawyers, and only
one in seven of those awaiting trial have private legal representation.
Although governmental legal aid exists, there are too few legal aid
lawyers for all the cases that require representation. Living conditions
in the prisons’ system are appalling. They are damaging to the
physical and mental well-being of inmates and in many cases constitute
clear threats to health. Conditions such as overcrowding, poor
sanitation, lack of food and medicines and denial of contact with
families and friends fall short of UN standards for the treatment of
prisoners. The worst conditions constitute ill-treatment. In many
Nigerian prisons inmates sleep two to a bed or on the floor in filthy
cells. Toilets are blocked and overflowing or simply nonexistent, and
there is no running water. As a result, disease is widespread.
Most prisons have small clinics or sick bays which lack medicines, and
in many prisons inmates have to pay for their own medicines. Guards
frequently demand that inmates pay bribes for such “privileges” as
visiting the hospital, receiving visitors, contacting their families
and, in some cases, being allowed outside their cells at all. Prisoners
with money may be even allowed mobile phones, whereas those without
funds can be left languishing in their cells. One inmate said: “If you
don’t have money, if you come to prison, you will suffer. They collect
money from you. It is not right.” The Nigerian government has, on
numerous occasions, stated its willingness to reform the criminal
justice system, acknowledging its role in creating a situation of
prolonged detention and overcrowding. Despite many Presidential
Commissions and Committees recommending reform of the criminal justice
system, these recommendations have not been implemented. Instead, the
government has simply set up new committees and commissions to study,
review and harmonize the previous recommendations. The reality remains
that those in prison stand little chance of their rights being
respected. Those who lack money stand even less chance.
All too often, individuals who are not suspected of committing any crime
are incarcerated in Nigeria’s prisons along with those suspected or
convicted of crimes. Some were arrested in place of a family member whom
the police could not locate. Others suffer from mental illness and were
brought to prison to relieve their families of responsibility for their
care. Most are very poor people who have no lawyer to advocate for them.
The Nigerian Constitution (Section 35) guarantees the right to be
brought before a court of law within a reasonable time. If there is a
court of competent jurisdiction within 40km, a reasonable time is
defined as one day; in all other cases “reasonable” is considered to
be two days or longer, depending on the distances and circumstances. In
practice, this is hardly ever accomplished. The Nigeria Police Force
claim they cannot investigate a crime and interrogate suspects within
such a short time, saying: “There is no case that you can crack within
24 hours unless it is a traffic offence.
It is important to note that, Amnesty International concludes that
Nigeria does not take seriously its responsibility towards its citizens
in prison. Recommendations made by national and international
organizations have failed to lead to any action by the government. The
recommendations of all governmental committees and commissions appear to
be little more than words, which have left the real situation in
Nigeria’s prisons unchanged. Inmates awaiting trial – especially those
who cannot afford legal support – wait years for their trial to take
place; the prisons remain overcrowded; prison authorities do not appear
to receive the funds that have been allocated to improving conditions.
Amnesty International is extremely concerned that few of the Nigerian
government’s promises have been translated into action.
However, with the proposed introduction of state governments building
correctional facilities in Nigeria is a welcome development; it would
help in no small to decongest the overcrowded and overstretched existing
facilities. It is only in this situation that the prison system will be
a corrective facilities and not make a place that makes criminal more
hardened and not amenable to correction, therefore, the government
should expedite action on the subject matter so that, the several
problems associated with the prison system in the country can be quickly
taken care off.