When hope rises for prison inmates

Justice Bukar came to explain the delays in the trial of the inmates in courts under his jurisdiction.The inmates had planned to protest that their cases have been stalled for one year. This situation is caused by the inherent inefficiencies in the country’s criminal justice system. But the present delay involving 31 cases is caused […]

Justice Bukar came to explain the delays in the trial of the inmates in courts under his jurisdiction.
The inmates had planned to protest that their cases have been stalled for one year. This situation is caused by the inherent inefficiencies in the country’s criminal justice system. But the present delay involving 31 cases is caused by the suspension of Justice Abubakar Talba by the National Judicial Council (NJC) for giving light sentence to a pension fraud convict in March.
If most of the inmates of the prison, who assembled to receive the Chief Judge, believed his visit was God’s answer to their prayers, then a new Case Management System (CMS) inaugurated same day with the Nigeria Prisons Service by the Prisons Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA) is perhaps God’s tangible reward for their solemn requests to him.
The pilot programme will reduce the duration of time spent by inmates like Aghedo, who said he committed no offence to be in prison. He also said since his arrest in 2004 by the police, he has not been made to face trial.
“I was a student when the police arrested me on the street. Since then, no complainant or witness has been produced to testify against me,” he pleaded on bent knees.
Other inmates like Mohammed Buba, Mohammed Ibrahim, Mohammed Kabir, Emeka Alex, Dauda Umar and Egwuoji Emmanuel shared similar experiences like Aghedo during the visit. All of them have been in prison for upward of seven years.
“I have two wives and six children,” said Ibrahim. “My case has reached the stage of judgment before Justice Talba was suspended. All I want is for the case to be decided. I wouldn’t mind if it is in my favour or not.”
Justice Bukar’s explanations apparently received little applause. He also said administrative steps have been taken to re-assign all criminal cases handled under the penal code to the high courts in Apo to reduce time spent by the inmates in the morning traffic trying to attend trial.
Many of the inmates showed their desperation to leave prison by kneeling and prostrating before the judge praying him to determine their fate on the spot.
Their plight is understandable. Among others they say Nigerian prisons are a nightmare. Food, clothing, medicine, rooms, and recreation are below standard. Most of the facilities are overstretched beyond built capacity. For instance, the Kuje Prison has space for 568 persons but it currently harbours 638 inmates. 483 of this figure are pre-trial inmates. Those convicted are 129. Nationwide there are 53,000 inmates, 36,874 of them are awaiting trial – approximately 70 per cent of the entire prison population.

PRAWA’s Executive Director Uju Agomoh said the CMS initiative was part of the speeding up justice programme supported by Justice For All (J4A) and the Department For International Development (DFID) for the Nigerian government. She said if the project is mainstreamed in Nigeria’s criminal justice system, it will address incidences of high cases of awaiting trial and remand inmates in the country’s prisons.
She said CMS, which will help in planning, is one of other interventions being produced by PRAWA to speed up investigation, prosecution, and trial processes and enable witnesses to attend court and to transport awaiting trial inmates.
The CMS is a computerised statistical data about every inmate from their remand through trial, conviction or sentence and discharge. Such data as name, age group, sex, state of origin, offence types, prison location, court information, and the closure are indicated in the electronic forms. In due course, the data will include fingerprints and photographs of the inmates.
“It is about information that can be used to advance ourselves strategically,” says Jeff Ansell, the Component Manager for J4A.
Apart from the Nigerian prisons, other agencies and organisations will make use of the data generated from the inmates. The records will serve an alarm system for how cases are being handled. It will help the police speed up their investigations, Ministry of Justice can provide more defence lawyers, courts may reduce gaps in adjournments.
“This will help us track what happens to the inmates in court,” says the Comptroller General of Prisons (CGP) Zakari Ohinoyi Ibraham.
 He bemoaned the difficulties in rehabilitating inmates who are yet to be convicted, saying their cases were full uncertainty though they may be in that situation for five years or more.  

The Comptroller of Prisons, FCT, Kasali Yusuf, appealed to the CGP for the extension and continuity of the pilot project beyond the expiration date.
Indeed, it is very ignoble to have a man behind bars – and for the wrong reasons. But the solution is not the frequent visits by the various chief judges in Nigeria and NGOs to the prisons. It is a fundamental reform in the country’s criminal justice administration that is long over due. But the practical step taken with the CMS may be the mustard seed that could sprout into a monumental tree of reform in the country.