Wednesday, 3 July 2013

Hell in Nigerian Prisons: Lagos-based rights activist blames police, lawyers, judges, others for congestion in prisons






EMEKA IBEMERE
In the eye of the international community, Nigerian government is one of the countries in the world with poor human right abuses.  This is because it has failed to meet up with its national and international obligations in the area of criminal justice system.
Despite several presidential commissions and committees that have recommended urgent reform of the Nigerian prisons in the in the past years, a number of Nigerian inmates are still languishing in jail without trial across the country.
Even with the lion share budgets earmarked for the Internal Affairs and Justice Ministries for the reform of the Nigerian prison service, the result is yet to be achieved due to the lopsided administration and sloppy justice structure in the prisons across the nation.
Since coming into power as Minister for Justice, Mohammed Adoke hasn’t deemed it necessary to visit any known prison for the on-the-spot assessment of the Nigerian prisons across the country and even feel the pulse of inmates who are still awaiting trial for close to 20 years.
Today, the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, Apapa, Lagos is filled with inmates whose human rights are systematically abused and violated. Roughly 80 percent of the inmates are on awaiting trial, most of whom have been waiting for their trials for 15 years. For instance, at the Maximum Security Prison, Kirikiri, Apapa, Lagos, over 200 inmates are on hold-on charges while at the Medium Security Prison, Kirikiri, 58 inmates are the awaiting Director of Public Prosecution’s advice list since 2008.
Investigation showed that the longest inmate on awaiting trail is one Sule Sanni with serial number C163. He was charged with murder and is, therefore, facing his charges at the Magistrate Court 1, Yaba. He was arraigned on January 8, 1999. Sanni’s charge number is A/1/99. He has been in prison for 11 years without trail after the first adjourned case.
Sharing the same fate with Sanni are three other inmates: Lookman Ajala, (10 years); Victor Akpan, (10 years); Wasiu Ajayi, (9 years); Abayomi Makinde, (8 years); Kingsley Ogbakpa, (8 years) and James Okoro (7years), respectively.
Shockingly, Daily Newswatch investigation further revealed that some had been buried and forgotten by family members on the grounds that they are dead, but are still in detention cells.
There are others who have been on awaiting trial for between four and six years. The least are the inmates on three years awaiting trial. Most of the offences allegedly committed by the inmates range from robbery, murder, unlawful possession of firearms, human skull, possession of double-barrel guns and other sundry crimes.
These cases are at the Magistrate courts sitting at Tinubu, Igbosere, Ogba, Ebutte-Metta, Tapa, Isolo, Ejigbo, Ikeja, and Airport, all in Lagos areas.
 At the Medium Security Prison, about 35 inmates are languishing without knowing the day of their trails. Out of this number, 33 have already spent three years waiting for trial.  
Their offences range from robbery and illegal possession of firearms. Investigations by our correspondent revealed that in Kirikiri Maximum Prison, 600 are on Awaiting Trial Men (ATM); 74 inmates are on life sentences; 110 have been convicted and 75 condemned to death.
It was gathered that those on death row have been waiting the hangman’s noose since 10 years, while the convicted criminals and 74 inmates on life sentences are rotting away without any proper attention.
The 600 on the waiting list don’t even know when their cases will be heard for the first time.
The whole scenario, according to a prison source, is a fraud. Before his suspension in the wake of the April polls in 2011, the then Minister for Interior, Navy Captain Emmanuel Iheanacho, had, shortly after being sworn-in, toured the Medium Security Prison in Kuje and Abuja, where he found many unfinished projects and demanded action. He also assured that his Ministry would work with in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice to speed up the trials of over 30,000 prison inmates that were on awaiting trial. This, according to him, was to allow for the release of inmates who had not been tried after three or more years in detention.
But that project seems to have gone with the sacking of Iheanacho, thereby dashing the fate of the inmates.
“Adoke and Abba Boro have not considered it necessary to take up that challenge. No wonder, the Boko Haram sect has taken up the challenge by releasing inmates in some Nigerian prisons”, says Onyeanuforo Chinedu, a social worker and deacon.
Also, in an exclusive interview with Giwa-Amu Igbono, a lawyer and a senior partner, Stephen and Solomon Foundation, a prison ministry of the Knights of St. Mulumba, Lekki Sub-Council, the reason why Kirikiri Maximum Prison and other prisons in Nigeria have continued to play host to so many inmates on awaiting trails are because of the poor legal assistance given to inmates by lawyers.
 Amu, whose chambers is devoted to ensuring that oppressed people who have been denied justice and their fundamental Human Rights are set free, further blamed his colleagues in the legal profession for taking up matters most of the times for pecuniary motives without having the freedom or liberty of their clients at heart.
 He also disclosed that his chambers had so far succeeded in securing the release of 3000 inmates from various prisons across the country.
“There are many reasons why so many inmates are awaiting trails. The blame must berth in the legal profession. My colleagues take up matters, where their primary interests are merely for pecuniary reasons. They are not interested in the freedom or liberty of their clients. That is why we have people we call “charge and bail. They are just interested in getting the defendants out on bail.
 “The fact that the government is not sincere with the decongestion of the prisons is disappointing. Also, it is disappointing that all the fines payable upon conviction go to the state governments, while the maintenance of prisons is borne by the federal government.”
It was gathered that due to paucity of funds, most of the cases last so long, as the maintenance of prisons are borne by a body that does not benefit from the fine payable. The state governments do not care how many people are in detention because their interests are financial and economic.
It was also revealed that some Magistrate courts are part of the problems of those on awaiting trails.
 Giwa-Amu revealed that the habit of judges absenting themselves from courts on flimsy excuses is another problem.
It was also gathered that some of the magistrates either engage in unnecessary oversea trips or come to courts complaining of headaches. Some even went on shopping sprees or selling assorted items, instead of looking at some of the cases they have at hand.
According to a reliable judicial source, there is the problem of the judiciary itself. Some of these judicial officers, particularly Magistrates, act capriciously in the daily administration of their own courts, thereby frustrating the trial of these detainees.
 Giwa-Amu disclosed that some of the magistrates give too stringent bail conditions, making it impossible for the victims to be granted bail due to the inability to meet some of the conditions.
He said the only way to nip in the bud the case of prison congestion is for the Deputy Chief Registrar (DCR) to enunciate some proactive measures that will bring about evoking its supervisory power over the magistrates.
Investigations also showed that most of the people in Kirikiri prisons are too poor to pay lawyers and only one out of seven of them has private legal representation.
Talking about those condemned to death but are yet to be executed, Giwa-Amu said, “Let’s talk about the present political atmosphere; no governor has had the courage to sign a death warrant for these people to be executed.
“Also, some of these cases are on appeal. You cannot go and hang a man whose case is still in the Court of Appeal. Even if the appeal is frivolous, vexatious and empty of substance, you will allow the highest court of the land to give its final judgment. So, there are some cases that are on appeal and there are even cases that have gone to the Supreme Court, where it has been confirmed that the person should die by hanging. But the present political era has not given any governor the courage to sign the death warrant.”

According to him, apart from it being political, the wind of change internationally now doesn’t look at punishment by death as a way out of the most grievous offences committed.
“Everybody is shifting away from death penalty to life sentences as the maximum punishment for any of offence. I think the government of the day is tilting towards that direction. In spite of that, their decision not to sign the death warrant is leading to the congestion of prisons. It is not these people that cause the congestion of prisons, but those on awaiting trials because they are more in number,” he quipped.
Amnesty International, while working on the prison system, exposed the gory state of Nigeria's prison system, saying that Nigeria's prisons are filled with people whose human rights are being systematically violated.
According to Amnesty International in February 2008, the criminal justice system is utterly failing the Nigerian people, adding that it is a mere "conveyor belt of injustice from beginning to end."
It was discovered that about 75 percent of prison inmates have never been convicted of any crime, with some awaiting trial for more than 10 to 11 years. One in seven awaiting trial has no access to private legal representation while there are only 91 legal aid lawyers working in the country.
Investigation revealed that Kirikiri prison is overcrowded and there are quite disheartening tales of the prison conditions, a situation that damage both the mental and physical health of the inmates.
According to the organization’s report, torture by police is also routine and widespread, with "confessions" extracted by torture often used as evidence in trials.
"The problems in Nigeria's criminal justice system, especially its prisons, are so blatant and egregious that the Nigerian government has had no choice but to recognize them. It has pledged many times that it will reform the system,” the organization claimed.
Amnesty International said that many inmates awaiting trial were effectively presumed guilty, despite the fact that there was little evidence of their involvement in the crimes they were accused of.
The organization, while x-raying the conditions of the inmates, also revealed how people not suspected of committing any crime were imprisoned along with convicted criminals. The report said that some were arrested in place of family members that the police could not locate; others suffered from mental illness and were brought to prison by families unable or unwilling to take care of them.
The report further showed the many could not afford the services of lawyers. Some cases take so long to get to court by the police because they always complain about logistics and unavailability of means of transportation to take the inmates to court.
A prison staff, who spoke under anonymity, told Daily Newswatch that the conditions in Nigeria prisons were far below  the UN standards for the treatment of prisoners.
 Checks at the Kirikiri showed that inmates sleep two to a bed or on the floor in their dingy cells. Toilets are blocked and overflowing or simply non-existent; and there is no running water, a situation that is responsible for why many of the inmates have contracted different diseases.
Efforts by Daily Newswatch to speak with the Lagos Prison Service Public Relations Officer were unsuccessful as calls made to his GSM line were not picked.

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