Reacting to the current intervention effort by the Federal Government to change the prevailing deplorable condition in the nation’s prisons, a top NPS official who had served in different prisons at different levels spoke with some misgivings about the development. As far as he was concerned, only a total overhaul of the NPS as presently constituted as well as the entire criminal justice system can change the situation. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he had submitted thus:

SETTING up a committee to decongest the prisons and to reform the prisons and the prisoners is a welcome development. But the problem goes beyond decongestion as any form of reform should start from the top of the Nigerian Prison Service as it is today. In the first place, the service is dominated by those who were transferred from other ministries or departments to the prisons department. For example, the present Comptroller General of Prisons, Bashiru Ahmed, was transferred from another ministry to the Prisons.

Apart from that, the problems which have hampered the operation of the prisons can be traced to the fact that both   the prisons and the prisoners are being managed by three different ministries.

The police who arrest and prosecute in court are in one ministry; the judiciary that prosecute the case against offenders are in another ministry being controlled by a separate minister; and the prisons department which carries out the order of the court either to produce an offender in court or execute his imprisonment is controlled by a different ministry.

The problem is that the operation between the three is not seamless but fraught with a lot of hitches. When the prison is ready, the judiciary is not ready, when the judiciary is ready, the prison service might not be ready.

So, until the three bodies are controlled and maintained by the same ministry and the same minister, every effort at reforming the prison will not achieve its purpose.

The main duty of the prison service staff   is to accept the custodian of those condemned to imprisonment on account of crimes committed against society. So, it’s important to study their behaviour and find out what is responsible for their deviant or abnormal behaviour.

Abnormal behaviour

After this then comes the process of reforming them so that after serving their terms they go back to society as better and useful human beings. This is supposed to be   the duty of the prisons staff. Indeed, until recently we had officers who could do this. That is not the case presently because of the crooked mode of recruitment. It was when they started recruiting in this manner that the problem began. And morale has been low among prisons staff since then.

That is unlike what is happening in the Customs Service today. The right kind of leadership made the difference for them as you can see the improvement so far in the Nigerian Customs since their current leader was appointed.

When he came in he first identified the problems in the Customs, especially the demarcation of ranks. For instance, he had moved to implement the approval of government since April 1992 for the Nigeria Customs Service to align with the Nigeria Police Force rank structure.

The same should have applied in Immigration and the Prisons because in April 1992, the Federal Government approved the removal of Nigeria Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service from the Civil Service structure.

Apart from aligning their rank structure with that of the police, the approval also restored parity in salary and conditions of service between the three para-military services and the police. But this presently does not apply in the Prisons Service relative to the police because along the line the approval was delayed and was not implemented.

When somebody is in level 1-9, you say he is an Inspectorate Cadet and the person in level 10-12 is Superintendent Cadet. But what we have in the Prisons is a situation where somebody who is on level 14 cadet works under somebody in level 8 superintendent cadet.   How is it possible for level 14 to work under level 8. What is the corresponding rank in the prisons?

That is why prison staff are not committed to the core; their morale is low.  Most of the prisons are overpopulated. Some of the prisons have the capacity for 300 inmates, while others are 400 but you see them having more than 700 inmates; some with a capacity for 600 have up to 3000 inmates. The population in Kirikiri is about 3000; Badagry has a capacity for 320 but the inmates are over 600.

Feeding of the prisoners: Presently the approved feeding allowance is still N450 per day for a prisoner, but the reality today is that the amount is not up to N150. In the past, those contracted to bring food to the prisons did so conscientiously as when the food was weighed it would meet approval. Unfortunately this stopped between 2005 and 2006. In the early ’90s the feeding was better; but from 2004-2007, the contractors stopped coming as the contracts got hijacked. The contract now is being awarded to some top level NPS officials who use company names to execute same.

In some prisons, you can count the number of beans given to them in spite of the fact that money was allocated for their  feeding. There was a time we confronted one of the controllers through the contractor; we asked him if he was aware of the number of inmates in the prison and how they are fed? We told him that many of them cook inside the prison which is not supposed to be the case. He was confused and threatened to punish us. In summary, poor feeding emanates from giving contracts to illegal people.

Surviving in prisons: Due to neglect, the staff and the prisoners are left to fashion their own means of survival. That is why today, there is so much illegality in the prisons across the country, it is called trafficking in prisons (illegal dealing with prisoners); it is rampant now in the prison service. Illegal dealings include smuggling into the prisons items like Indian hemp and phones. Some prison staff allow this in a bid to get money from the prisoners or members of their families. Recently, a DCG from Abuja was sent down to search some of the prisons in the Medium Prison, more than 300 phones were recovered.

On prison bedding

Most of the prisons are no longer provided with beddings and mattresses, so the inmates mostly sleep on the floor. They are also not provided with clothes to wear. But we thank God for some churches, especially the Catholic and the Redeemed churches, that regularly bring clothes, food and beddings. But for them the situation would have been terrible and I can assure you that we would not have been able to cope with the situation.

On prison medication: Healthcare-wise, there are no provisions for treatment of indisposed inmates as medicines are usually not provided. Again it is the churches that usually come to our rescue. When prisoners fall ill, in most cases it is the staff that rally round to contribute money to take them to hospitals which usually demand money before treatment. Even the government hospitals that are supposed to treat the prisoners free demand for money before treatment. Yet they were arrested, tried and incacerated under state law. So by right their treatment is supposed to be free but they are asked to pay; where you don’t have money to pay you don’t get treated.

It is only when money comes from individuals or churches that the sick prisoners get treated in the hospitals. The situation took a turn for the worse when a certain controller general went on air to announce that there are standard hospitals in prisons, adding that there was no need to be transporting the in mates to the General Hospitals. But he lied and I believe he said that in order to get money from the Federal Government. The reality is that in some cases the only medical personnel in charge of the entire prison is an optician.

In those good old days, there was something called after care service. After their training, you get them materials and a place. The after care service visits them there to monitor their progress. That was the case in the early ’80s and ’90s. As at today, most of the prisoners are idle and an idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop; so when they come out they become more hardened. They even form gangs while in prison and only perfect what they have learned on leaving prison.

Complicity of the criminal justice system

When we say criminal justice system, we are talking of the body that controls crime in the society, bringing crime to zero level. It is made up of the police because they are the ones to arrest the criminals, the judiciary as they are the ones to verify and impose punishment on the offender after conviction. Prisons have a role to play because they are the ones to carry out the order of the judiciary to reform and rehabilitate the person back to the society. For me, the police are responsible for the problem of awaiting trials in the prison. In most cases, the police fail to properly and quickly investigate matters before a court leading to unnecessary adjournments and delay in administering justice. The police usually tell you that they have referred the matter to the Director of Public Prosecution, DPP; the DPP’s role is to investigate. When the DPP needs to investigate, the Ivestigating Police Officer, IPO supplies him with the information;   but in most cases, the IPO will not be available. When this is the case, the DPP and judges will not be able to perform their duty, leaving the inmate to languish in the prison without trial.

The ratio of those on awaiting trial is more than 70 per cent in the nation’s prisons. In other words, they are in the majority. Those classified as awaiting trial are supposed to be treated differently from those already condemned, but today there is nothing like that. An awaiting trial inmate is still not presumed innocent until after the determination of his fate by the court of law. So on the basis of this, their treatment is now worse than those of the condemned.

On female inmates living with children: It is possible and I also feel it’s not right. It was rare in those good days, but now we have corrupt officers employed in the service who have bastardized the system.Because of money they allow inmates to go out in the streets when they are not supposed to do so.

Working condition for staff: The working condition for staff is really bad. If you enter any prison in Nigeria, you cannot see any single chair for the staff to sit and work unless in some of the prisons where churches have provided them with chairs. In some of the prison yards and even in the headquarters , you will only see chairs donated by Giwa Amu, a lawyer. This is not supposed to be so.

Today, they are supposed to issue uniform to junior staff at least twice in a year but I cannot even remember the year they last did this for the staff. Out of your small salary, you buy the uniform, and that is why if you assemble ten warders now, their uniform cannot be the same because they went to different markets to buy the clothing material.

There is no more promotion, unless you buy it. Those that buy it know how to go about it. They go to the headquarters and bribe those in a position to secure promotion for them. Some persons get promotion every three years and some have been on promotion queue for the past 15 years. A 2007 National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission circular informed of the approval granted by the President for new salary structure for paramilitary services known as the Consolidated Para-Military Salary Structure.

Hazard allowance

The items consolidated with the basic salary are transport allowance, meal subsidy, utility allowance, hazard allowance, house maintenance, uniform maintenance allowance, general services allowance, furniture allowance, detective allowance, hardiness allowance, plain cloth allowance, torchlight allowance and personal servant allowance(for entitled officers).

Unfortunately most staff don’t enjoy the full benefit of this as at the end of the day so much is deducted from it under various guises, including tax. But when you demand for tax clearance certificate you don’t get to receive it as the money from every indication is not remitted. There is also the case of the microfinance bank which the CGP mandated every staff to buy shares into with money for it being deducted at source. The amount deducted from each staff was N3,000. And with the total number of staff being 29,000, the total amount deducted from staff comes to about N9 million. Till date, no one has told us what has become of that money.

On recruitment: Now in the Nigerian prisons, there is no recruitment but replacement. You don’t even know when they recruit people to the service, you only see when they bring somebody in, usually with no training as such people start work immediately.

 

Hellhole called Nigerian prisons

This is the concluding part of this report which was first published on Thursday and subsequently on Friday and Saturday.

‘THERE are also challenges of logistics sometimes resulting in the inability of the prisons to produce awaiting trial persons in court as at when due and this has often exacerbated the congestion phenomenon. Although recent procurement of court duty vehicles is addressing this but we are still far from the mark. These accumulated inadequacies and many more have tended to stunt the growth of prisons in Nigeria.

“The decision of the Federal Government to set up the Prisons Decongestion Committee is a welcome development, though committees of this sort have been constituted in the past. What is however different this time is the pragmatic approach taken to simultaneously address the myriad of problems confronting the management of the prison itself. Some of these steps include rehabilitation of existing prisons and construction of brand new ones across all the states in the country to mitigate the effect of congestion.

“Equally, the procurement of 217 operational vehicles to ease transportation of pre-trial detainees which was a major contributing factor to slow dispensation of justice is worthy of mention. To us, constituting the prison decongestion committee is a step in the right direction. The Committee I’m sure will explore all avenues to proffer sustainable solutions to the perennial problem of overcrowding,” he submitted during an interview with Vanguard INSIGHT.

On the matter of the delay in taking the inmates to court, Enobore exonerated prisons of blame, adding that  investigating and prosecuting responsibilities of the inmates rests with the Police and the court. He noted that the NPS role is just to keep the accused in custody until the case is dispensed with.

 

We’re doing our best to improve on performance—Prisons Boss 

But in spite of criticisms of poor performance against the prison authorities, the Controller General of the Nigeria Prison Service, CGP, Mr Ja’afaru Ahmed, has continued to insist that the NPS under his leadership has so far lived up to expectation. He said the goal of the Nigerian Prisons Service under his leadership is to have a system that provides conditions of imprisonment above the minimum standard prescribed by the United Nations, stating that recent developments attest to this drive. According to him, in spite of several challenges militating against the Service, including paucity of funds, he had done his best with the limited resources at his disposal to motivate his staff for greater productivity or performance.

One way he claims to have done this is through redeployment, promotion and recruitment. For instance, last October, a total of 32 senior officers were redeployed as part of efforts to ensure efficient service delivery. The NPS boss also recently made reference to the promotion of 11,000 officers which, he said, was intended to boost the morale of the rank and file.

“I am glad to disclose that the Nigerian Prisons Service has promoted over 11,000 personnel to boost staff morale and their productivity. We have also compiled the list of qualified officers for the next promotion exercise which is coming out soon,” he said, adding that there was a plan, subject to next year’s national budget, to recruit 6,000 officers and men to boost the capacity of the service in achieving its statutory mandates. He said if the budget is approved, it would further enhance several deliverables both on the part of inmates and the staff in general.

He revealed that with the active support of the Minister of Interior, Lt. Gen. AB Dambazau (Retd), the Federal Government approved an upward review of budget allocation to address the myriads of challenges bedeviling the Service. According to him, this singular approach coupled with prudent management of resources has changed the face of the Nigerian Prisons Service to the admiration of all and sundry.