NIGERIA-HUMAN RIGHTS: Left to Rot in Prison

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Feb 7 1997 (IPS) - Thousands of people spend long periods awaiting trial in Nigeria’s overcrowded prisons, and those who come out alive are more likely than not to gravitate towards a life of crime, according to experts here.

“Most of the convicts and persons awaiting trial remanded in prisons were not hardened criminals when they got there, but when they leave, they become worse than when they got in,” says Lagos psychologist Amadu Kasim.

“The persons awaiting trial are just there in prisons without facilities to rehabilitate them and when they eventually gain freedom, they become counterproductive,” he told IPS.

A survey conducted late last year showed that the 143 prisons in the country were built to accomodate 33,348 inmates but housed 55,000, of whom 35,750 (65 percent) were on remand. Because of the congestion and generally poor conditions, infectious diseases like tuberculosis and cholera are prevalent and, according to the 1996 survey, 9,905 inmates had died in the five previous years.

The police and justice authorities have been blamed for the months, sometimes years, that remand prisoners spend in custody, and the resultant overcrowding in Nigeria’s penitentiaries.

According to Aliu Adams, chief judge of the north-eastern state of Adamawa, “the delay by the police in conducting investigations in criminal matters, coupled with the slow approach by the Attorney-General’s office in giving advice to the police have worsened the situation of prisons in the state.”

The two prisons in Lagos state, Ikoyi and Kirikiri, are no better. Built to hold a combined total of 1,856 prisoners, they housed 3,442 at the end of 1996 and, of the 1,904 at Ikoyi penitentiary, 1,742 had not yet been tried.

Though no figures are available, thousands of other suspects are being held in police detention cells throughout Nigeria, according to police sources.

“We have the law but we don’t respect it,” comments social scientist Jonathan Joshua. “There should be right to justice, which states that an arrested person should be taken before a court within 24 hours, but this is not being done by the police.”

“The police should not take laws into their hands,” he says. “Let the courts decide whether to sentence or not to sentence a suspect. They should not be allowed to remain in prisons or police cells without trial.”

Joshua feels the courts should strike out any case that has been adjourned more than thrice in six months because of incomplete police investigations. “This will help decongest the prisons,” he says.

The police, however, feel they are being blamed unfairly. “We are having increases in criminality and … when people are arrested, the only place they can be sent is the police station,” explains Police Public Relations Officer Tunji Alapini.

“If for one reason or the other some of the cases are not being tried, the suspects remain in police custody but if the case is bailable, as much as possible the detained persons are released on bail,” he adds. “… where there is an influx of offenders of the non-bailable category, we have no alternative than to remand them in police cells pending their arraignment.”

Lagos state Chief Judge Samuel Ilori has set the decongestion of the state’s prisons and speedier trials as his main priority since his appointment late last year. Under a programme he has launched, magistrate courts are to be built near the prisons to make it easier for the suspects to appear in court.

One of the reasons that have been advanced for the many trial delays in Lagos is that the police do not have enough vehicles to ferry prisoners from the penitentiaries, which are outside the state’s urban centres, to courts in town.

The non-governmental Good Shepherd Halfway Home Community has tried to help in this regard. It has been providing transport from prison to court for remand prisoners, according to its programmes coordinator, Emmanuel Ache.

Ilori has also promised to try to reduce the time people spend on remand.

“The second stage of my decongestion programme is to discuss with the police authority to ensure that nobody is kept in police custody for more than 24 hours as is provided for under the Nigerian constitution,” he said recently. “Persons awaiting trial in police cells should be transferred to the prison custody where they will be tried immediately.”

That still leaves the issue of rehabilitation, an area in which the Good Shepherd Halfway Home-Community says it has been active.

“The organisation offers services in and outside the prison through the methodology of educational and halfway-home rehabilitation for the purpose of orientating prisoners towards a meaningful ambition and reintegrating them into the larger society,” Ache told IPS.

“We have trained about 1,500 prisoners in Lagos prisons and we intend to extend our service to Benue state (in the north) where land has already been acquired for our office building,” he added.