Relief may be coming to inmates in Nigeria Correctional Centres (formerly known as Prisons) across the country as House of Representatives Committee on Reformatory Institutions expresses concern over the deplorable state of the facilities.
Chairman of the Committee, Anayo Edwin, said in a statement in Abuja that the House Committee will soon embark on a nationwide tour of all correctional facilities in the country to get firsthand information about the facilities to enable the house come up with intervention modalities.
The committee vowed to ensure the full implementation of the Correctional Act 2019 signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, so as to ensure that the objectives of Nigerian Correctional Services are actualized.
The lawmaker said, “we are not unaware of several reports on the deplorable state of affairs within the Nigerian Correctional Services and the centres in general, including congestions at the various correctional centres, decaying infrastructure among other challenges confronting the service.
“Despite the provision of the Act that the custodial service shall provide “safe, secure and humane custody for inmates, inmates are still held in inhumane environment. While the Act provides for implementation of reformatory and rehabilitation programme to aid reintegration of inmates back into the society, not much is be done in this regard.
“However, in line with the legislative agenda of the ninth House of Representatives, under the leadership of the speaker, Rt. Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, the house is committed to the full implementation of the Act. This is to ensure the repositioning of the Nigerian Correctional Service, so that the service can perform optimally in the discharge of its roles in the polity. Consequently, the committee has concluded plans to embark on a tour of all the correctional centres nationwide.
“The tour which is in the discharge of the committee’s mandate, to effectively oversight the Nigeria Correctional Services, is to afford members an avenue to get firsthand information on the service. These include firsthand information on the state of the correctional centres, ranging from the infrastructure, the condition of the inmates, as well as the general state of affairs of the Nigeria Correctional Services. It shall also afford stakeholders an opportunity to interact directly with members of the committee on how to get things to work better in the service.
“During the tour, the committee apart from taking an overview of the state of infrastructure at the correctional centres, shall also isolate factors militating against the performance of the Nigerian Correctional, especially as it concerns the personnel of the service and the inmates. The parliament will want to see a situation where the correctional centres becomes real reformatory institutions, as it is obtained in other parts of the world. Therefore, at the end of the tour, the committee shall fashion out legislative solutions to all the identified problems by ways of motions and bills, where necessary.”
We hope the lawmakers will not play politics with this move and seriously go and save the inmates who are currently living like being in hell everyday of their lives.
A Nigerian Twitter user,Vicbach who shared photos of the outrageous condition in which inmates live, also shared photos from prison facilities in Finland.
See more photos below.
