Major implications of Nigeria’s new Correctional Act

By John Chuks Azu

President Muhammadu Buhari has signed into law the Act amending the name of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) to Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS). The action has raised major issues among them: funding, the involvement of states, private sector and NGOs, infrastructure and manpower.

The president’s accent which was announced by his aide on National Assembly matters, Ita Enang, on August 14, came 11 years after the bill was first presented before the National Assembly and 19 years since proposals for reform of the country’s prisons were made.

The bill was first presented before the Senate in January 2008 by former member of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, and was read a second time in 2010.

The Act signed by the president has two faculties: The Custodial Service and Non-custodial Service. The Custodial Service, among other roles, will custody and take control of persons legally interned in safe, secure and humane conditions, conveying remand persons to and from courts in motorized formations; Identifying the existence and causes of anti-social behaviours of inmates; Conducting risk and needs assessment aimed at developing appropriate correctional treatment methods for reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration; and implementing reformation and rehabilitation programmes to enhance the reintegration of inmates back into the society, among others.

The Act further provides “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. And Section 12 of the Act 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.”

The Non-Custodial Service faculty 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. Restorative Justice measure approved in the Act includes victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed necessary at pre-trial, trial, during imprisonment or even post- imprisonment stages.”

Some of the challenges include:

Funding challenges

The adequate implementation of the new Act would involve much funding. In the 2019 fiscal year, South Africa budgeted R23,848bn, that is over N500bn for its correctional service, although some of the reformation projects are funded by grants and partnerships.

According to the Nigerian Prisons Service website, there are 73,995 inmates across the various prisons in the 36 states and the FCT. Of this figure, 23,568 are convicted inmates while 50,427, which is about 69 percent of the inmates, are on awaiting trial.

Many of the projects for correction and rehabilitation would require more funding because of the use of technology and manpower that would be needed, and the need to recruit and retraining of professionals into the correctional service, experts say.

For instance, the Executive Director of Prisoners Reform and Welfare Action (PRAWA), Dr Uju Agomoh, said in April 2018 the bill was sent to the president who refused to accent then for two reasons one of which was Part 44(d) of the bill which proposes 5 percent of the funding for the non-custodial funds to come from fines from the courts. “We said that didn’t do much damage because there were other sources of funding.”

The role of states, NGOs, partners

Another major issue in the new Act is the role of the states in the effective implementation especially, the non-custodial measures. Parts 44 and 45 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) shows how states can help in non-custodial measures.

“Many states, including the states that have adopted the ACJA have not fully activated this part,” Agomoh said.

“The third is also to ensure that the real focus is on corrections not punishment, and that explains the name change, and finally the whole notion of ensuring and facilitating the reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration. So it is more than a name and there are many things packed in it.”

“My hope is that the Federal Government would fund this very well and I am also hoping that the states would not just fold their arms and watch the Federal Government struggle to fix the prisons and the criminal justice system,” says Sylvester Uhaa, who is the Executive Director of Citizens United in the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE).

“As I have always said, prisons maybe a federal institution, most of the inmates in prisons are indigenes of those states. So, I am taking this opportunity to support the Federal Government in implementing this new law. Also, NGOs, development partners and religious organisations should contribute.”

Reformation facilities

New facilities would be required for technical and skills training of inmates and equipment such as Electronic Monitoring Systems for the non-custodial faculty.

A human rights lawyer, Hameed Ajibola Jimoh, said more facilities to enable family members to visit and interact with their members in custody should be provided as part of the restorative justice in the new Act.

Manpower needs

The custodial system means that there would be a new head of that system while the Comptroller General of Prisons will remain in charge of custodial system and trained supervisors would have to be recruited for the programme, says Uhaa.

“If you send people on parole, probation or if you put people on community service, it would require people to monitor them. So, it would require resources,” he said.

PRAWA’s Agomoh also said it is not just about the name, but there are different things that are packed in this very progressive piece of legislation.

“The first thing in Section 2(1) (a) to (d) of the Act is that it wants to ensure that the operations of the now Nigerian Correctional Service is in tandem with international human rights practices, meaning it will be in compliance with the United Nations standard minimum rate for the treatment of prisoners known as the Mandela Rules; that it will be in tandem with the Bangkok Rules, which deals with women,” he said.