We’re building 10 new prisons to tackle insecurity – Abba Moro

You have spent almost a year now as Minister of Interior, can you tell me one thing you have achieved? Let me tell you that what I have achieved that I’m very happy with today as a Minister of Interior is the repositioning of the psyche of staff of the ministry. It is the drawing […]

You have spent almost a year now as Minister of Interior, can you tell me one thing you have achieved?

Let me tell you that what I have achieved that I’m very happy with today as a Minister of Interior is the repositioning of the psyche of staff of the ministry. It is the drawing of staff from the position of despair into achievement driven community. I’m happy about it because the major problem of this country today is the lack of confidence in the system. That is the engine house of all our efforts to believe that the system can work again.

What did you do for them?

When I got to the ministry, and I saw despondency and despair on the face of the staff, I went to town to find out why it is so. For years, promotions have been very degrading; staff placements especially in the civil defence corps and the fire service have been very degrading. I can tell you that officers of the prisons and immigrations have stagnated in one position for upward of 14 years. And because of the nature of fire services that require some level of coordination, staff of the ministry have been scattered all over the town, making rapid response to emergencies very difficult and we came out with this novel idea of a housing scheme that we characterize as paramilitary villages to build houses at very low cost combining with a private developer to render one hundred thousand housing units for men and women of all our services across the 36 states and Abuja. And as I’m talking to you, the vehicle scheme of the various services that has been in place over time has literally gone moribund and we have resuscitated the scheme. Two months ago, I went to commission or present 500 of such vehicles to prison staff. Next week, we are also going to present another 500 units to civil defence corps. If you go to the ministry of interior today, if they do not look up to anything, they look up to the fact that we have a right approach to solving problems of staff and providing welfare for staff. And that is the necessary ingredient to enlisting the support and energy of all staff of the ministry to achieve results for the ministry and of course, for Nigeria.  So, I feel very happy that we have been able to lay that foundation between government and worker and that is the basic towards achieving the results that we intend to achieve in the ministry.

The prisons service in under the ministry of interior. Sir, how many people are in Nigerian prisons?

We have at the moment that I’m talking to you, approximately, 50,127 prison inmates in Nigeria. When I assumed office, we had 48, 752 prison inmates. Out of this number if you want to know, 69 per cent of them are awaiting trial. 31 per cent of them have been convicted which presents ordinarily a very sad picture.

There was supposed to be a prison de-congestion programme of the administration. What has happened to it?

The prison decongestion programme of the administration of government is actually domiciled in the ministry of justice. I do not have a comprehensive knowledge of their approach but what I can tell you today are that on assumption of office, given the sad scenario that I have just indicated, the ministry of interior has devised a new approach that is anchored on creating access to justice. It will be sad to note that one of the biggest problems that we have today is that we do not have the necessarily operational vehicles to move inmates to access justice. We have had a series of postponements of court appearances because there are no vehicles to convey prisoners or inmates to the court. But I’m happy to inform you that Mr President has graciously given an indication of preparedness to at least meet 50 per cent of our Black Maria requirements and very soon, that will be done. We have made it a priority so that we do not compromise our regulations guiding incarceration to ensure that prison inmates access justice. Aside from providing operational vehicles, we are in consultation with the office of the Honourable Attorney-General and the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria. We are in consultation with the offices of the Attorneys-General of states and Chief Judges of states and I’m happy to inform you that this collaboration is paying off because the Chief Judge of Cross River state called to inform me that based on my discussions with her on my visit to Calabar prison, when I noticed the presence of minors in that prison, that she was going to visit that prison again. She told me that she had visited to confirm my story that there was a minor in the prison whose incarceration was just occasioned by circumstantial evidence that could not even be substantiated and that in the process, she also discovered another minor and made a suggestion as to the need for us to think about building remand homes for minors rather than putting them together with hardened criminals, a suggestion that is receiving very good attention from the ministry of interior. We believe that a combination of these will get access. Aside that, because of the rising tension in the country and the rising conflicts in the country and the anticipated influx of inmates, we have in the watch, plans to first of all complete over 10 prison projects whose contracts have been awarded since 1981 but mid-way abandoned like the one that is located in Koton Karfi is more than 40 per cent completed; which means that it remains about 60 per cent to be completed. We believe that these prisons, and possibly given funds to construct additional prisons like the one we are doing now in Akwa-Ibom and Ekiti states. They are two modern prisons with the active involvement of state governments….

Where are you constructing these prisons, including the ones you are working on now?

These prisons are scattered all over Nigeria. From Borno, Gashuwa Prison; from Benue, Otukpo Prison and we have prison project in Yenagoa. In Ilorin, we have one that is virtually completed.  In Ibadan, Oyo state capital, we have one that is nearly completed and also in Owerri. So, these prisons are scattered across the country in all the geo-political zones.

You are talking about forty-seven that ought to have been constructed.

Yes, those contracts were awarded in 1981.

Why were they not executed?

That is the nature of the Nigerian contract system for you. People eagerly come to approach ministries and parastatals for contracts. Some of them also mobilized to go to sites but they abandoned them. But the major problem from my investigation in the completion of these projects arise from budgetary constraint with regard to the release of funds. Again, I’m happy to inform you that Mr President has graciously indicated preparedness to intervene in the release of funds. As I’m talking to you, we are talking with the ministry of finance with a view to getting their support in releasing funds for the completion of these projects.

You mentioned the case of a minor in Cross River. Are you not supposed to be talking to the police instead of talking to the ministry of justice? You see some of these petty crimes that are supposed to go to court are actually handled by the police. You pick somebody on the street, you ask him to pay N10 and he said he cannot pay it and the next thing you said is that he is an armed robber. You take the person to the cell and from cell to prison….?

Let me say that the whole process involves a complete re-orientation of our people and re-arrangement of our value system. Yes, ordinarily, I can talk to the police. If minors are arrested, or if criminals are arrested and they are taken to police custody, if we develop the necessary synergy between these two agencies; the ministry of interior and the police, we can effect their release if these things come to our notice but the complication in the prison situation that I’m talking to you about is that these persons have been sent to the prison on the orders of the Judge. So, you can no longer by any government fiat release them, except the intervention of the judicial or court process. That is why once you have been taken to court, and your case has commenced, the only way to intervene is the use of prerogative of mercy or the intervention of the court process. That is the complication in this situation. But I want to say that with the new approach we are developing now, making constant consultations with the Attorney-Generals and Chief Judges of the state and the federal governments, I hope sincerely that the approach to incarceration will assume a new dimension.

Is there any control in terms of the administration of the prisons because we heard that foods served in prisons are very bad and inmates are badly treated as if they are not human beings? People prefer to be in prison in a country like Togo than to be in prison in Nigeria. What control measures have you brought in?

I don’t want us to dwell on speculations here. I have been to the prisons. There is no doubt that the conditions in our prisons are less than desirable. But I do not think that it is correct and fair to the prison system to insinuate that people are treated as if they are less than human beings. I have been to the prisons. The foods that the prisoners eat are prepared by the prison inmates. They serve them food that other ordinary Nigerians eat. The quality may differ but don’t forget that we are talking about feeding fifty thousand inmates across the country with a budgetary provision that may not be commensurate with the average feeding rates of the average Nigerian. So, within the constraint of funds on budgetary provision, but not unmindful of the basic requirement of the inmates, I think the food in terms of quantity and quality cannot be characterized as inhuman.

Why can’t young Nigerians join the paramilitary agencies under you without a recommendation from a lawmaker from the National Assembly?

That is the reality that is on ground now. This is because of the fact that there are too many persons angling for employments In Nigeria. Mr President has acknowledged the absurdity in the rising case of unemployment in Nigeria and efforts are being made to create employment opportunities for people who want to join the government service and also to create enabling environment for young entrepreneurs to engage in employment on their own given the necessary inputs. The greatest challenge that we face in Nigeria today is the fact that virtually everybody wants government employment. So, if we have over 5 million Nigerians that need job….Today, we have the desire to get more immigration personnel employed to be able to control Nigerians. Today, we have the desire to employ some prison officials to man our various prisons. The situation arises when you have a budgetary provision to employ 250 immigration officers, you advertise and you get over one hundred thousand applicants. We are faced with logistics of providing venues for interviews. We are faced with the problem of setting examinations and conducting interview for the exercise. Considering the disaster that occurred in recent time where people who applied to get into immigration created a stampede and many Nigerians lost their lives. It becomes dangerous for you now to say that when you want to employ 200 immigration minors that are school certificate holders and advertise. It becomes dangerous. So, in the face of too many persons competing for few spaces, a scenario will play out in which out of 1000 persons that applied for 200 jobs, 500 of them have virtually the same marks. The question of choice becomes a very serious problem. Our system is such that a serving senator sends in a letter requesting for assistance from a member of his constituency and you look at the score sheet of people who have applied to get admitted. For two positions, 10 persons have 60 per cent so to say. And then a serving senator says please can you help my person he says he has applied for this position. And if you look list of 10 persons that have got 60 per cent looking for two jobs, naturally, you will be tempted to say okay let’s pick this person from the senator at least in recognition of his position and service to the country. Those are cases that abound. I have had a similar situation where the cut-off point for promotion of certain categories of officers is 60 per cent. You are faced with a dilemma of a situation where you have to promote about 250 persons. Yet, the established vacancy for that position at any point in time is 58. Now, what do you do with the person that has met the minimal score line of 60 per cent and people who have gotten as much as 93 per cent against the backdrop of the fact that scoring very well in examination is not the only indicator or factor for promotion. Other factors are there. So, these are complications or dilemma that you face when you are conducting these exercises. I believe very sincerely that the situation, unless you have the introduction, you may not get employment, may be real in isolated instances. But the fact still remains that even as we are talking now, the persons who have been introduced by senators might score the same point with the other persons who are on the streets. But one or two other factors, especially when you look at their record in terms of their grades in examinations and the passes they have recorded even from their own previous institutions of learning, you will be able to differentiate even if a senator does not introduce you. But it is not uncommon that you find out that by coincidence the person who has been introduced by a senator, minister or government official may necessarily have been the person that could have been picked even if there is no introduction.

But how long will this continue?

Let me tell you, the situation will stop when we have less people competing for less places. I can tell you that the situation will stop very soon as we talk about federal character.

You have ‘civil defence organizations.’  Why are planning to give them weapons?

I want to say that the acquisition or procurement of weapons for the civil defence corps is a universal international practice. We are a member of International Civil Defence Organization. And we do not go out of our threshold to engage in practices that are not internationally accepted. The weapons that we are talking about here are in two categories; lethal and non-lethal. The civil defence corps is also divided into various units. We have the armed squad unit whose role is to participate in quelling non-civil disturbances. We have what I can characterize as regional civil defence unit whose duty is to quell internal civil conflicts. We have the canal unit; that is the dog unit that is essentially charged with the responsibility, as part of civil conflict resolution unit, of controlling crowd disturbances. We have the anti-terrorist unit. So, the deployment of officers and materials of the civil defence corps depend on the task that is at hand. It will be unfair on the part of men and women of the civil defence to put them on the arms wheel by putting them in military joint task force without weapons to defend themselves.

How are you cleaning up the process of allowing illegal foreigners entering this country? I used the word clean up because we understand that some people like Chinese, Indians who are mechanics without any qualifications are coming in as engineers and become big men in Nigeria.

In my presentation at the ministerial platform, and my interaction with the media in recent times, I have said that we have automated the citizenship and business department of the ministry on interior. One of the reasons is that we want to ensure that people who have no business to do in Nigeria do not come here. I have heard this story of people who claim to possess qualifications that have come to Nigeria and have been discovered to be mere crooks, artisans, and pretending to be engineers. The arrangement of citizenship and business unit of the ministry of interior is to ensure that only people who possess the qualifications come into Nigeria. By automation, much of the energies will now be concentrated on approval when these papers have been cross-checked. It is now left for the ministry to decide on which categories of persons we want in this country. It is also the intention of the ministry to enforce the requirements of the provisions of the act establishing the department. There must be for every expatriate an understudy who within a specified period must assume responsibility; two Nigerian understudies for one expatriate quota granted. And within 10 years and maximum of 15 years, these Nigerian understudies take over from their foreign counterparts. And that only skill that cannot be sourced internally in Nigeria are allowed to come to Nigeria. I’m afraid that in the past these have not been enforced and because of logistic problems, the immigration service has had difficulties in following up the administration of the expatriate quotas so that if you give 100 quotas for company, you expect that that company will have employed 200 Nigerians by our regulation and that within 10 years, these 200 Nigerians should have the necessary capacity to take over. I’m not too sure that that regulation is being enforced. One of the components of the automation of the citizenship and business department is the convocation of a stakeholders’ forum to ensure that we come out with a convention that will religiously apply the provision of the law; by ensuring that these organizations that employ these people also ensure that the Nigerian understudies are employed. At the end of the stipulated period, Nigerians take over. But the difficulty there is that there are certain categories of these expatriates that you certainly cannot take over from because an expatriate brings his capital into the country, establishes an organization or business in the country, he is the MD/Chief Executive of his organization no matter what you do, there is no way he can will-nilly accept that for a Nigerian who has been understudying him to become the Managing Director and Chief Executive officer because he will want to superintend his business and so these are some of the little contradictions that we have in the establishment act.

How many illegal aliens have you been able to mop up?

I can say that we have about 4000 illegal aliens and the process is ongoing. This number is gathered between February and March and within the same period under review over 16, 880 persons have been refused entry into this country because they don’t have any business to do. I can tell you that over 2000 plus Nigerians who want to travel out of the country didn’t have proper travel papers and have been refused exit. The process is ongoing but the challenge that we have is that the volume is enormous and we even lack the necessary human capacity to enforce our desires but that is not to say we will not continue to do the very best within the limit of our ability to ensure some level of sanity about entry and exit from Nigeria.