Imprisoning the Future – Worrisome Situations in Nigerian Prisons.

by Eze Eluuchie,

Below is the basic data on inmates at the Owerri federal Prisons in Imo State, South Eastern Nigeria: 
          Prison Maximum Capacity:         540 inmates

          Presently accommodates:         2, 260 inmates

          Convicts:                                       216 inmates

          Non-convicts/Awaiting Trial:    2,044 inmates

The Owerri Federal Prisons presently accommodates 418.5% above the number of inmates it was built to hold. 90.44% of the inmates in the Prison are merely awaiting trial and have no business being in the Prison in the first place – until and if they are convicted.

Some persons awaiting trial have been detained at the Owerri Prisons for over 10 years.

In the course of interviewing some of the inmates or going through their case files (for those who still have case-files). a startling revelations immediately becomes apparent: quite a great proportion of those merely awaiting trial have not only stayed in custody beyond the period they would have served if they had actually been convicted, and secondly, some were just detained, on framed up charges by some 'big-man', which in some cases can be as mundane as an uncle who wants to do away with a 'troublesome' youngster who refuses to let his late fathers property be wrongly taken away. And pronto the youngster is thrown in to the prison and rots away there ad infinitum.

Earlier pro-bono efforts, under the aegis of the Prison Decongestion and Human Rights Program (PDHRP of PADDI Foundation) aimed at ameliorating the dire statistics above and ensuring that at the very least persons awaiting trial who had spent overly long periods in the Prison were released were frustrated by bureaucratic bottle-necks, demand of gratification by officers of the judiciary and the general decay of the Nigerian system.

Though Owerri Prisons stands out as having the worst Prisoner : Awaiting Trial Men (P:ATM) ratio among Nigerian prisons, the pattern is reflected across all prisons in Nigeria to a lesser level.

We shame ourselves and humanity by our treatment of those who we have, rightly and at times wrongly, consigned to the prisons. A place that ought to serve to reform and probably make better, is transformed to a pit where the negative is multiplied and society eventually pays a high price for allowing evil to flourish.  

One really wonders where all the millions of dollars in developmental aids and donor grants accorded to various government agencies and ‘human right protection’ or ‘civil liberty’ non-governmental organizations by foreign governments, development partners and donor organizations filtered to.

The real sorrow for the peoples of Nigeria is that whilst some pick-pockets, small time bandits are wallowing in our jail-houses, the mega criminals who rape the contraption blind, pillage the treasury and launder their loot in foreign territories and sponsor mass atrocities in a desperate bid to hold unto political power are escorted around our poorly paved streets in siren-blaring convoys, maiming and killing at will.  

For the sake of those who are saddled with citizenship of Nigeria, the Nigerian contraption simply needs to be restructured and renegotiated.

Picture: Inmates in a sleeping position at a Nigerian prison.