Uncertain fate of pregnant women in prison …as eight kids were delivered in Kirikiri Prisons

Emeka Ibemere

For a woman to be pregnant while in prison custody is the worst experience for any woman to bear. Will she receive the medical attention she needs? Will she be given the emotional support she needs? And will she be allowed to get out of her cell when labour starts? And most importantly, will she be able to keep her baby after delivery?

Eight women are in these situations inside the Kirikiri Female Prison in Kirikiri, Apapa, and Lagos State.

Between 2010 and 2013, eight babies were born in the female wing of the prison.

While some of the women delivered their babies inside their cell rooms, others put to bed either at the nearby Naval Base Hospital, which is a short distance from the prison or at government hospitals in the Apapa Local Government area of Lagos State.

It was gathered that the youngest of the kids that was delivered behind bars in the female Kirikiri prison is now eight months old.

Investigation revealed that the kids would be released to the families of the convicts when they are 18 months old and have been weaned.

When Daily Signpost visited the female section of the prison some months ago, the kids and their mothers including pregnant ones were allocated separate cell-rooms which were different from that of the other female convicts.

The rooms accommodate seven pregnant inmates with their beds arranged like students’ beds in a school dormitory.

A source revealed that most of the ladies were sent to the prison from  police cells with their pregnancies contracted while in police custody, while others were impregnated inside the prison yard.

Seven of the babies were born in early 2012, while the last baby was born in October 2012, by one Miss Precious Tochukwu.

Tochukwu was remanded in the female section of the Kirikiri prison by a magistrate court on alleged murder charges, brought against her by the Police.

Tochukwu was arraigned for the murder of a Lebanese businessman in a Lagos hotel. She delivered her baby last year in her cell, while the case was ongoing.

 “Yes, we have cases like that. Right now, we have about eight children born behind bars. The youngest was about eight months old. The mother is one Precious Tochukwu. She was arraigned for murder of a Lebanese man,” Chief Giwa Amu, a counsel, defending Tochukwu confirmed in an interview with Daily Signpost

Precious Tochukwu is one of the clients of Stephen and Solomon Foundation headed by Chief Amu -- an organization that provides free legal services to indigent persons in Nigeria. According to our source, Precious was arrested by police when the body of the late Lebanese businessman was found stone dead in a hotel where he was lodged.

 “In one of our visits to her; we met her in prison, and she told us that she was an artist, and the Lebanese comes to Nigeria from Europe to scout for and contract artists. And he had about eight of them who he was sponsoring,” Amu said.

“She, Precious Tochukwu traveled home because her mother called her. Then she received a call from the police that she was wanted by the police, and she came back to Lagos because she did not know why they invited her to Panti, Yaba”, he said.

“When she came, she was confronted with some of her pictures that was found in the hotel room of the deceased. What the Lebanese does is that when he has a contract with you, he keeps you in the same hotel where he was lodging and he normally takes the passport photographs of the artists he was sponsoring on the contract form.”

 “So, when they found the body of the deceased, they found the passport photograph of Precious and other persons’ photographs, so two of them were arrested and charged to court for the murder of the Lebanese man without taking her fingerprints or proper investigation conducted to ascertain whether she was involved in the murder. No eyewitness statement, the only thing that linked her to the death of the man was that her pictures where found in the man’s hotel room,” Amu added. Tochukwu is still awaiting trial.

Amu said that one Dr. Adebayo goes to the female prison on weekly bases to check on them during pre-and ante-natal stages of their pregnancies. “So talking about the place, am not trying to paint a picture of it being rosy, but the basic things needed are there”, Amu further claimed.

Meanwhile, the lawyer disagrees with the claims that male inmates are responsible for the pregnancy of the female inmates in prison.

“It’s unfortunate that people have the impression that inmates impregnate female inmates in prison. In the first place, you have Ikoyi Prison that only keeps male inmates who are on condemned list”, he added.

“You have Maximum Kirikiri Prison that keeps awaiting trial inmates convicted or condemned and you have the female wing of the Nigerian Prison, which is completely occupied by female inmates who are condemned or convicted or awaiting trial.  So I don’t know how such kind of an opportunity will ever exist. That is as a general rule now.”

However, our correspondent learnt that there are cases where inmates are deceived into getting pregnant while they are still in police custody not when they are in prison.

According to our source, there is an erroneous belief that if a suspect was pregnant as an inmate that the court wouldn’t convict her or condemn her to death; especially in the case of murder or capital offences.

Another lawyer, Chinedu Enyinna, added that this is the major

reason why female inmates get pregnant while in prison.”

Amu feared that children born behind bars could suffer stigmatization in future if those children could be treated or seen by their society as children born in prison. “Stigmatization? Yes! If in the future, she is referred to as a child who was born in prison. Yes! She might be stigmatized but I think a kind society will know that she was not in custody out of any wrong of hers”, he added. 

Amu said the issue of the child being stigmatized may be there but affecting the child’s psychology may not matter because according to him, the child doesn’t know anything sufficient enough to affect his psychology at three months or 18 months the child was with the mother.

“Three months old now, at three months, what does a child know? What does the child know to make that child be affected by the circumstances of her birth; may be because she was stigmatized, it might overspill to her being psychologically affected,” Amu asked.

Several attempts to get the Public Relations Officer of Nigerian Prisons Service in Ikoyi were not successful.

However, Nigeria is not the only country where inmates deliver babies while in confinement. Despite the defence of Giwa Amu that no prison warder puts inmates in a family way, there are still held views that these pregnant inmates are not impregnated by ghosts. Prison authorities  at Kirikiri maximum prisons are denying warders were responsible for the pregnancies. A female warder told Newswatch that the women contract their pregnancies outside the prison, during their trials. Mba Chukwudi, a psychologist, says such kids are liable to turn to criminals if they are allowed to stay in prison at five years. Chukwu calls for prison reforms to prevent pregnant women prisoners because of their health and that of the babies.

Chukwu added that with the poor and dreadful prison condition in Nigeria, it’s high time the government started looking for better ways to treat female pregnant inmates, so as to prevent them from contracting deadly diseases.

He mentioned the poor feeding culture, rationing of food in prison, the small quantity of food that is not enough and the drinking water that are served in prison as unhygienic for pregnant women.

 Like the case of Tochukwu, who has been awaiting trial for five years, her hope of coming out depends on when her case would end as she is about to wean her child, yet she is not sure when she would leave Kirikiri prison with her baby.