By Ugoji Egbujo
With a facade of neat compounds, trimmed hedges and a beautiful tennis court , the Kirikiri prison must approximate a well kept tomb . Because the rottenness is on the inside. Or nearly so. Extortion starts from the gates.

This should be the age of rights . Domestic animals have a plethora of rights defended fiercely by humans . Yet , full blooded humans, citizens, wither in state custody in Nigeria. Kirikiri maximum prison has no barracoons but I wonder if some of its cells aren’t worse than those slave holding cages. Humans are held in conditions of such unspeakable indignity that should traumatize the conscience of any people, any cultured people.

The Kaduna Central Prison in the early hours of Tuesday.

Many agree with Dostoevsky that the state of a society’s prisons is a veritable measure of the society’s level of civilization. On civilization, we perhaps regressed. People now defecate, unabashed, openly, in daylight, on major streets in Lagos. A traffic jam, a bus driver jumps down, runs to the back of his bus , backs the vehicle behind him, lets loose his fly and lets loose his bladder. Onlookers, some indifferent, others at best embarrassed for being witnesses, throw faces away, no disgust, no outrage. Only a few will cringe at the spectacle of a racing stream of urine on a tarred road. Shame has deserted us.

Public morality has become extremely elastic in Nigeria. Despite oil wealth, prevalent widespread poverty and anomie, unfortunately, mean that only misery bordering on barbarity will provoke the merest of public concern. After all haven’t some theorized that prisons cannot be more palatable than the average living conditions of generality on the outside? So since many live unsheltered in abject poverty in Makoko, inhospitable prisons aren’t therefore altogether immoral in the circumstance? That perhaps explains why dehumanization of inmates won’t abate soon.

But if the society chooses to incarcerate offenders , should it take more than time from them? Should it ruin them? Even condemned convicts deserve human dignity . Nigeria is a signatory to international treaties and conventions that prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments. Prisoners have rights protected by the law.

The painful truth is that the majority of the prison inmates are on remand, yet to be convicted, innocent . Even for convicted criminals, the prison must aim to reform and rehabilitate. The main essence of imprisonment must be to protect the public from harm prior to the reformation of the mind. Retribution and deterrence are good penal objectives but without reformation and rehabilitation they mean little.

Many agree that prisons globally have become crime colleges. Isn’t it why the rate of recidivism even in English prisons is higher than 70%? But if livable prisons cannot steer convicts away from crime then sordid deplorable prison conditions must make criminals irretrievable reprobates. The harsher the prison the greater the incidence of post release criminal activity.

A crime infested society like Nigeria will naturally be a society keen on punitiveness , eager to see offenders behind bars. And if such a lawless society has a moribund , corruption ridden, criminal justice structure then chances are that impunity will reign . Crimes will go unpunished and conviction rates will be low from poor and compromised policing and prosecution .

The truth is that Nigeria, comparatively, has a low imprisonment rate. But since we have an abysmally poor prison capacity , our prisons are consequently grossly overcrowded. If prisons are so decrepit that they are only centers of retribution , degradation and torture then their value to the society must be reassessed. The majority of those in prisons are youths . Of what use is it that young men are processed through prisons only to be introduced to criminal careers? What can be said of a society whose prisons cannot reform young minds? Whose prisons turn mere offenders charged of misdemeanors and environmental offences to hardened criminals.

A remand or custodial sentence places a moral duty on the society. The safety, health and well-being of inmates must rest on the society. So its not enough to say that like in Ajegunle is perilous. What the society owes inmates is not mercy or charity but an obligation to protect their rights , to promote their well being while in custody

If Kirikiri maximum prison is Nigeria’s flagship custodial institution then the horrific living conditions of inmates in other far flung prisons are better left unimagined. In the north east of the country, temperatures can hit 45 degrees . Overcrowded prison cells with small windows , poor power supply and no generators become ovens. You remember Gashua ? Late Gani Fawehinmi had bad memories of confinement there. His air tight hot cell was invaded by a multitude of lizards and a swarm of flies. Many of our prisons are colonial structures. You know the love , that was, between white colonial masters and their unruly subhuman black subjects.

Fate dealt a cruel hand to a friend two years ago. Many have suffered similar fates. He was charged for a non violent offense that ordinarily would attract no more than 3 years in jail. The accused , then a putative first offender, was not in anyway a flight risk and posed no danger to witnesses and evidence. The judge , reputed for firmness and uprightness , strangely bought into the overzealousness of the prosecutor and his fabrications and denied the accused bail. It was her prerogative and she exercised it without even considering the possibility of strict bail conditions to compel court attendance.

Many prosecutors in Nigeria, when they are not fixing cases, oppose bail applications rather perfunctorily. They seek to have people remanded even when the charges preferred against them and their circumstances do not warrant such measures . Brutality and unprofessional zeal cannot compensate for lack of prosecutorial depth. It’s widely known that lack of prosecutorial acumen and diligence prevalent across prosecuting agencies in Nigeria make admittance to bail nearly synonymous with acquittal.

So this friend was remanded in prison custody-( Kirikiri maximum prison) and was there for about 10 months before the judge saw reasons and granted him bail on health grounds. The sense of the injustice he was served is sharpened by the fact that he was discharged and acquitted of all the charges preferred against him two months later. His cruel fate gave me an opportunity of numerous visits to that prison.

Like all prisons , even prisons in the UK , many inmates are unfortunately persons awaiting trial. But Kirikiri, like many other prisons in Nigeria, is home to persons who have been awaiting trial for ungodly number of years.

Many have been in custody for periods longer than the maximum sentences prescribed for their alleged offences. 70% of inmates in Kirikiri are on remand, yet to be convicted. Some have been on the awaiting trial list for upwards of eight years . Some, tragically, no longer have traceable case files. Yet they remain imprisoned by the state. Section 35 of the constitution guarantees speedy trials for accused persons. Routine, frivolous and reckless adjournments can translate to some cases going without getting even a hearing for a whole year.

Warders blame judges and judges blame prosecutors and the police and many blame lawyers. The trade in blames has thrived for ages, and even legislators come, contribute crocodile tears , leave , and forget. Lack of professionalism across board has been chiefly responsible for the tardiness that has enveloped the criminal justice process. A rickety process crippled by corruption. Aptly described by the Amnesty International as a conveyor belt of injustice. The prisons are swarmed by persons awaiting trials. And they are innocent like everyone else until convicted.

Some poor and destitute souls rot in prison for minor offences because they cannot meet bail conditions. Judges grant bails and fix conditions, look away and let them languish. There is a skills acquisition programme but persons awaitingtrial who constitute the majority , spend years in jail , but will not benefit.

Overcrowding is common in many jails in many jurisdictions but literal squashing of prisoners in some cells in kirikiri must amount to inhuman and degrading punishment. Seven men forced into a cell where they must lie on themselves if they choose not to sleep in turns. And in the dry seasons with crazy temps and humidity levels , inmates sleep and wake in pools of sweat . The condemned prisoners cells have all the trappings of barbarity. At nights they have buckets for toilet facilities. And these humans share their limited floor space with loads of faeces and urine and hopelessness.

Then you wonder where the rich stay in these prisons? The warders have created different cells with different levels of comfort and which have different price tags. The VIP cell costs as much as N250,000 for admittance. My friend had hesitated on the night he came in and was made to taste the conditions in one of the condemned prisoners cell . A man on remand for practically failing to fulfill a commercial contractual obligation was made to spend a night with condemned prisoners in such filth. Early the next morning, without haggling, he paid and was transferred. Extortionists. The condemned prisoners cell is their tool. Pretrial detainees are sent there to force them see reason to pay rents for less horrendous cells

So money gave him some relief and access to some other privileges . So in a sense the conditions will remain terrible because the rich aren’t affected and the warders have to collect rents. The segregation is immoral but would have been less intolerable if it didn’t have the consequence of perpetuating the neglect of some sections of the prison, warder’s bogeys. Where those of little means must then stay and learn their lessons of penury.

TO BE CONTINED NEXT WEEK