The Federal government has announced that it is constructing six prisons or what that is now called correctional centres in the country’s geopolitical zones that would accommodate 9,000 inmates when fully completed. It is estimated to cost billions of naira.
Statistics have shown that the existing 240 custodial centres across the country house about seventy-seven thousand, two hundred and seventy seven inmates as of 1st August, 2022. Of that figure, over seventy percent or fifty two thousand, three hundred and eighty four are awaiting trial inmates. More so, the living conditions of the inmates and the facilities of the prisons make the centres anything but correctional.
Many Nigerians have said that the conditions in the centres make inmates in our prisons more hardened than corrected when they are released from them. Paraphrasing Bob Marley, the reggae legend, countries that fail to build and maintain schools would of necessity, build more prisons.
A lot of unanswered questions arise as to why the country’s prisons have more awaiting trial inmates, referring to inmates that have not been convicted of any crimes when the country’s constitution states unequivocally that a person is deemed innocent until found guilty by a competent court of law. What are such a high number of awaiting trial inmates doing in the prisons?
Given the number of their inmates, it presupposes that the prisons or correctional centres are grossly under populated if only convicted inmates are consigned in them. Should the country be wasting much needed funds to build new correctional centres? Why will the judiciary not quickly deal with the cases of the awaiting trial inmates so that the innocent ones among them could regain their freedom? Is the federal government planning to compensate them for breaching their fundamental rights, for the years incarcerated without trial?
The current national government has overtly shown its disdain for education by allowing public universities to remain under lock and key over a strike action that has lasted a whopping seven months and counting.
The private universities make Nigerian parents and guardians pay overwhelmingly exorbitant fees for the education of their children and wards. The government has abdicated its responsibility of providing the enabling environment for the youths of the country and rather, wants to build prisons to throw them into.
A sign of failure of a country is when more citizens are going into crimes because there are no jobs to deploy them to. When there is gainful employment in a country, few citizens will take crime as the last option.
The government must act quickly to avert a looming disaster caused by neglect of the youths.
Written by TONY OKAFOR
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