‘53,000 inmates in Nigerian prisons’

THERE are currently a total of 36,874 awaiting trial inmates in Nigerian prisons nationwide, according to authorities of the Nigeria Prison Service (NPS).
Spokesman for the NPS, Mr. Ope Fatinikun, who disclosed this in an interview with Saturday Tribune, said the service had a total of 53,019 inmates in its custody throughout the country, out of which 16,145 have been convicted by various courts across the country.
He put the population of male inmates whose stay in the prisons custody is between three months and three years at 7,549; 78 for their female counterparts (a total of 7,627). A total of 6,938 others are currently serving long-term sentences, out of which 6,826 are male, and 112 are female.
According to Fatinikun, a total of 1,094 males and 19 female condemned inmates are currently in the prisons custody, while 459 males and eight females inmates are serving life jail.
The NPS spokesman blamed the congestion in the prisons on the nation’s criminal justice system. He noted that the awaiting trial suspects outnumber the convicted ones, challenging members of the public to verify this with courts’ records nationwide.
Buttressing his claim that the nation’s criminal justice system is responsible for the congestion in prisons, Fatinikun noted that some of the ex-convicts were taken to court 48 times before they were sentenced.
He cited the case of an ex-convict, Bashiru Majiyagbe, who, he said, had been remanded at the Ikoyi Prisons since 2008 on the order of a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, over allegation of tampering with Petroleum Products Marketing Company’s pipelines.
“The accused was sentenced to five years imprisonment on May 16, 2013, after which the case was backdated to the date of arrest and (he) was subsequently released that day.
“When he (Majiyagbe) was in Ikoyi Prisons, we introduced carpentry and soap making to him as a way of prisons reforms exercise, but he said he had not been convicted, and the prisons authorities agreed with him because he has his fundamental human rights intact, since he had not been convicted as at that time. How do you reform that type of person?” he said
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