B 
y Mohammad Ibrahim
“There is no life here in prison because life is simply miserable. No freedom and the condition is bad,” said Oyewale Ajibola, a prisoner serving life sentence in Kaduna convict prison.
Oyewale was jailed for Armed Robbery in 2003 and has already served 6.
“I was brought here after the court found me guilty of an armed robbery offense. But I know I’m not guilty,” he said
There are many others like him in various prisons across Nigeria, who are serving jail terms for various offences, majority of them awaiting trial.
Experts believe that the slow pace of the criminal justice system in Nigeria is responsible for the congestion of prisons across the country.
Authorities reveal that over 34,000 out of the estimated 48,000 prisoners in Nigeria are people awaiting trial, describing the situation as a serious threat to the reform process in the country’s Prisons.
Even though, prisons worldwide are established to reform citizens who may have in one way or another break the laws of the land – the aim is sometimes defeated in Nigeria, when awaiting trial inmates suffer unnecessarily before conviction.
Prison Condition
Nigerian prisons are overpopulated, or congested, most times with hardened criminals ending up in the same cell with those who are awaiting trial.
Investigation reveals that up to 50 inmates most times share a single cell in the prisons, and their condition of living bad, that they end up contacting various skin and other communicable diseases while in jail.
“I will never pray for my enemy to be jailed in any of the prisons in this country, because the condition is too bad,” said an ex. Kaduna convict who prefer to remain anonymous.
According to him, majority of the inmates in Kaduna prison are within the age 25 – 35 years old.
Human rights organisations, including Lawyers without Borders often speak on the need to decongest the prisons since majority of the inmates are people awaiting trials, and those who committed minor offenses such as stealing yam tubers, mobile phones, and goats among others.
There are also those inmates facing capital punishment who were kept in the prison for many years without been executed, and the government continue to feed them.
Recently, Kenya freed over 7,000 prisoners in an exercise to decongest its prisons.
From The History
In fact, in Nigeria some of these prisons were built during the colonial era and are still in use in the 21 century, with some of the structures already falling.
Kaduna Convict Prison for instance, built in 1915, is now over 100 years old, and in the last 50 years the prison has suffered a lot of neglect.
The prison was built for 530 inmates, but today it has over 1,000 prisoners, majority of them awaiting trial.
Some reasons advanced for delay in trials include inconclusive investigation on cases by prosecutors expected to speed up trials.
“It takes time for prosecutors to investigate cases and to send cases diary to Ministry of Justice for advice. Delay in all these, make magistrates to remand suspects in prisons,” Kaduna based Legal Practitioner Muhammad Bello Umar said.
Other Key Challenges
Kaduna State Ministry of Justice has manpower challenge, which is why the State Governor, Nasir Ahmed El’rufai, while presenting 2017 budget to the State Assembly announced a plan to recruit about 100 lawyers next year.
Chief Justice of Kaduna State Justice Tanimu Zailani, on March 16, 2016 released 56 inmates from the Kaduna Central prison as part of efforts to decongest prisons in the state.
He also attributed the high number of inmates to the failure of judges to be fair and just in the discharge of their duties.
He stressed that only justice would prevent the current situation where people were sent to jail for trivial offences.
“Most of the prisoners are in prison for simple theft, but were branded with armed robbery just to keep them in prison.
“As Judges, we are supposed to be professionals and should not be found truncating justice in whatever guise. We are expected to uphold justice and that is what we must do,” he said while addressing the judges outside the prison.
A member of Lawyers without Borders, Barrister Meshach Ajeokwu, also described prison condition in the country as below international standard.
“People need to sympathise with them because the environment they are in is not habitable and things need to change. Government needs to take the issue of prisons decongestion seriously,” he said.
