BUHARI URGES ALL GOVERNORS TO CUT THE PRISON POPULATIONS IN THEIR STATES TO SAVE COSTS- SEE MORE

NIGERIAN WATCH

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has directed state governors across the country to reduce the number of prison inmates in their various states as part of a drive to cost government costs and reinvigorate the economy.   Nigeria is currently believed to have about 60,000 prisoners, made up of both detainees and those convicted of various offences. However, like every other government parastatal, the Nigerian Prisons Service is struggling and most prisoners are crammed into massively overcrowded, dilapidated cells, which are old and sub-standard.  

 Apart from funding, keeping prisoners is seen as economically wasteful, as they could be put to more productive use in the economy. According to figures published last year, 1,484 prisoners are on death row, 531 are serving life sentences, 7,436 are serving long-term sentences: and 8,591 are serving short-term sentences.   Kaduna State governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who disclosed this while on a working visit to the Kaduna convict prison, said the president’s directive was in the spirit of decongesting the prisons across the country. He added that the state government, despite its financial challenges, would do its best to ensure that the people prison for wrong reasons and are awaiting trial get justice.  

 Governor El-Rufai said: “Our leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, has directed all governors to visit prisons and ensure that we reduce to the barest minimum those that have spent many years awaiting trial in our courts. It is injustice for a person to be kept for a long time in the name of awaiting trial, which is why he directed all governors to undertake such visits so that, working together with the ministry of justices and the prison authorities, we’ll ensure we do something about it."  

 Receiving the governor, the state controller of prison, Abubakar Garba, noted that the Kaduna convict prison, established in 1915 with the capacity of 547, is now housing over 1,000 inmates. Disclosing that about 114 inmates were condemned criminals, with 11 of them citizens of Kaduna State, he appealed to the governor to commute the death sentences of 11 inmates of Kaduna State origin to life imprisonment.   Mr Garba also revealed that the prison had only two functional vans for conveying about 800 awaiting trial inmates. This, he said, portends danger to the people of Kaduna State.