By MONSURU OLOWOOPEJO

LAGOS State government said 1,015 offenders have been sentenced to various terms of community service across the 12 magisterial districts of the state, in the last 100 days.

The figure is 340 higher than the 611 offenders sentenced in the previous 100 days, marking the 2,400 days of the present administration in the state.

This was contained in the document obtained by Vanguard at the event marking the 2, 500 days in office of the present administration, last week As of  2013, only 1,154 offenders were sentenced to community service within a period of seven years.

The state government said that this was part of its effort to decongest prisons in the state.

The state government explained that the state community service scheme is a non-custodial punishment enshrined in the state’s criminal law, and was one of its strategies aimed at ensuring speedy dispensation of justice.

The government added that through the community service, which requires offenders to do some community work, it has succeeded in de-congesting the prison system without compromising justice administration.

“Also, the state government facilitated the decongestion of prisons through speeding up the treatment of police investigation case files sent in for legal advice, and so far, completed work on 122 police investigation files in the last 100 days through the legal advisory unit in the state Directorate of Public Prosecution, DPP.

This was 168 files less than 290 files the state expedited action on in the previous 100 days of the Governor Fashola’s administration, to decongest various prisons in the state.

Payment of debt and compensations

The state government assisted aggrieved residents of Lagos to recover the sum of N152.6 million through payment of debt and compensations.

“We assisted aggrieved citizens to recover N145, 338, 314; N6, 132, 883 and N1, 147, 000 as debt and compensation in various matters through the Citizens Mediation Centre; CMC, Office of the Public Defender; OPD and Directorate for Citizens’ Right respectively.

“The state provided free legal services and defense of Human Rights in 6,152 cases through CMC, OPD and the Human Rights Protection Unit of the state ministry of justice.”

The state government, also in the last 100 days, approved the sum of N183 million for Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, AOCOED, Ijanikin; to improve the college infrastructures, reaccreditation of courses and automation of the bursary department.

While N177 million would be used for the re-accreditation of college courses and improvement of infrastructure, N6 million would be used for the automation of the bursary department.

This came barely one month after the students of the collegeh protested increase in tuition fee and  bad state of infrastructure in the institution. On security, the state government also disbursed the sum of N3.7 million to the families of 11 neighbourhood watchers who died on active service, as well as injured watchers to cater for their medical expenses.