The Federal Government has disclosed that a total of 75,601 inmates, including 1,271 military detainees, are currently behind bars in different custodial centres across the country. This figure includes 74,044 males and 1,557 females.
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Of this figure, only 19,064 (representing 25 per cent) are convicts. The rest are awaiting trial persons. Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, stated this yesterday at the Joint World Press Conference organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture in Abuja. Aregbesola said that out of the number of those convicted, 3,150 of them are on death row awaiting execution. He said the number of those in this category had swollen over time because of the delay by state governors to assent to execution warrants pending on their tables.
According to the minister, one of the biggest challenges facing the custodial facilities is the huge number awaiting trial persons constituting a whopping 75 per cent of the inmates’ population and disproportionately usurping resources and space. He appealed to state governments to speed up the justice delivery system so that justice will be quickly delivered for those awaiting trial for various offences.
“Many of them have been in detention for periods longer than the maximum jail terms prescribed for the offences they were alleged to have committed. Justice delayed for these detainees is justice denied. “Prosecution and defence counsels also deliberately ask for long adjournments (as delay tactics meant to wear each other out) and obtain advantage for their sides. This should be discouraged. “There should be a judicial reform that will bring all criminal cases to an end within a specific period once trial begins, as obtains in some other countries.
This will clearly eliminate the unsavoury state of long and seemingly indeterminate detention periods for awaiting trial persons,” he said. Aregbesola recalled that at the outbreak of COVID-19, the government initiated a programme of amnesty and pardon, leading to the release of some inmates, whose crimes were not serious, and on compassionate grounds. The government, he said, paid the fines for some while others were released based on old age or sickness.
He expressed delight that not a single case of infection was recorded in any of the custodial facilities, even as the disease raged worldwide and wreaked untold havoc across the globe. In August 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law the Nigerian Correctional Services Act to repeal the Prisons Act with the prime aim of refocusing the mandate from its retributive and punitive thrust to correction and reformation.
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