LACON, PRAWA roll out new national legal aid scheme

But the Clearing House Scheme (CHS), a programme initiated by the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria (LACON) and  the Prisoners’  Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), with the support  of the Justice For All (J4A) and the British Department for International Development (DFID), ensured  his case was re-opened and he has regained his freedom.Without the intervention, […]

But the Clearing House Scheme (CHS), a programme initiated by the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria (LACON) and  the Prisoners’  Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), with the support  of the Justice For All (J4A) and the British Department for International Development (DFID), ensured  his case was re-opened and he has regained his freedom.
Without the intervention, Ajibo would have remained a mere statistic of the Awaiting Trial Persons (ATPs) in Nigeria’s slow criminal justice system with his fate hung in the balance for too long.
“I never imagined that all through the 16 years I spent in prison awaiting trial that I will ever come out some day,” said the furniture maker, who was first remanded at the age of 21. “But they gave me hope which I never had.”
The CHS, which has Enugu and the Federal Capital Territory as its pilot centres, has caused the re-opening of many redundant cases. The scheme met 546 ATPs in the FCT between July 2013 and August 2014, and successfully concluded 229 cases through discharges, acquittals or convictions. It, however, still has 317 pending cases, 91 of which are in custody, according to Francis Igiriogu, Acting Programme Manager of PRAWA.
In Enugu, the scheme, which began in November 2013 with 118 cases, has seen the completion of 26 cases while six persons have been granted bail. The scheme also achieved freedom for eight inmates at the Nsukka prison during the jail delivery embarked upon by the state chief judge in 2013.
These success stories informed the formal national roll out of the CHS in Abuja on Friday. Thirty five state coordinators of LACON and six zonal directors were trained during the event.
The two-day event, which has the theme: ‘Enhancing Legal Aid and Pro bono Services in Nigeria’, highlighted issues at the core of speeding up criminal justice in the country.
Stakeholders from the prisons, judiciary, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), human rights agencies, faith-based organisations and the media participated at the event.
In her address, the Director General of LACON, Mrs Joy Bob-Manuel, stated that the amended Legal Aid Council Act, 2011 has widened its scope and introduced a community legal service to indigents in accordance with the United Nations Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in criminal justice systems adopted at its General Assembly in 2012.
She regretted that the insurgency in the north-east, which has led to the relocation of many LACON lawyers to safer parts of the country, has negated the council’s policy of four lawyers per state.
To bridge the shortfall of legal aid services across the country, Mrs Bob-Manual said: “It is important to take upthis initiative of owning our mandate by providing a mapping report which means compiling a database of all legal aid providers in Nigeria which include both legal practitioners who are willing to give pro bonoservices, civil society organisations and faith-based groups interested in legalaid.”
Speaking on the key impediments to its ‘Speeding up Criminal Justice Project,’ the Executive Director of PRAWA, Dr Uju Agomoh, identified lack of legal representation for the delay incriminal trials inNigeria. To solve this problem, she said a “comprehensive analysis of the supply of legal aid and pro bono lawyers and the number, locationand type of remand prisoners/detainees requiring free legal representation” should be obtained.
“There is need to have a structured process that enables us to capture all; not ad hoc, but let us have a data bank of how many persons in these prisons do have legal representation,” she said.
Mrs Agomoh also harped on the identification of strong leadership within the justice sector in thevarious states to drive the reforms, and building the necessary skills for sustainability.
She calledon the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), represented by the first Vice President, Francis Ekwere, and General Secretary, Afam Osigwe, to find a way to encourage lawyers with both financial and non-financial enticements to engage more in pro bono practices.
Responding, Osigwe promised that the NBA will soon commence a programme of volunteering in legal aid scheme among lawyers. He said the association will take its campaigns to the Nigeria Police, which is the first responder in criminal matters.
Emphasising this point, Ekwere said the NBA will soon obtain a full list of human rights committees of its various branches with a view to signing up for the Clearing House Scheme. He added that the Bar will embark on periodic visits to police stations across the states to see the conditions of inmates in conjunction with state chief justices.
Presenting a paper on ‘Assessing and Responding to Legal Aid Services and Needs’, Dr. Ifediorah Wilfred Orakwe, the Controller of Prisons and Social Welfareof the Nigerian Prisons Service said Nigeria which has a population of 170 million people, with a prison population of 55,935 inmates in the country, 38,295 (68 per cent) of which are awaiting trial and a ratio of 32 out of 100,000 persons are detained, mismanages criminality because many people who ought to face the law are not brought before it.
He used this to explain why many criminally minded elements from Nigeria export their nefarious activities to other countries of the world which is also why many Nigerians are in foreign prisons.
To buttress this point, he read comparative figures for Africa thus:
South Africa with a population of 53 million people has 157,394 inmates, 21.4 per cent of whom are pre-trial inmates; the country has a population of 294 to 100,000 persons in prison.  
Kenya with apopulation of 44million has 53, 163 inmates, 36 per cent of whom are awaiting trial and a 121per 100,000 ratio of persons held in custody.
Uganda has 38million people with 41, 837 prison inmates, 55 per cent of whom are on awaiting trial and 111 out of 100,000 persons are prison inmates.
Ghana with a national population of 27 million has 14, 410 inmates with 21 per cent on pre-trial and 55 persons out of100,000 held in custody.
With these observations in Nigeria’s criminal justice systems, the workshop later went into group work to enable participants address the observed challenges.
Among the key outcomes of the workshop wasthe need for LACON, flowing from its expanded mandate under the 2011 amendment, to take charge and coordinate legal aid and pro bono services in Nigeria; the NBA as  the umbrella of all lawyers in Nigeria, to complement the work of LACON; and finally, all state coordinators agreed to set up the Clearing House Scheme in their respective states without delay.
If these outcomes achieve the expected reforms in the Nigerian Prisons, perhaps cases of prolonged incarceration such as Ajibo’s will become history.